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T H K
DIVINE HUMAN
IX
THE SCRIPTURES.
TAYLER LEWIS,
UNION COLLEGE.
6 Ao/of TOV Qeov &v Kai kvepyfa. . . . HEB. iv : 12.
6 Aoyof oapt; iyivero. . . . JOHN" i : 14.
NEW YORK :
ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS,
No. 530 BROADWAY.
I860.
V*
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S59, by
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the
Southern District of New York.
EDWARD 0. JENKINS,
IDrmtrr & Strrrotnper,
No. 26 FRANKFORT STIIKKT.
PREFACE.
A TRUE faith in the Scriptures must have its strength in the
Scriptures themselves. This would seem to be a proposition
of the clearest reason. If the Bible be the word of God with
a human voice, then must it speak to the human soul directly
as no other word, no other voice, can speak. Too much have
we relied on outward helps. Not casting away, then, but
leaving behind our Apologies for the Bible, our Philosophies
of the Bible, our Reconciliations of the Bible with Science, we
should come directly to the Scriptures, with the rational as
well as reverent belief, that if they are divine they must con
tain within themselves their own strong self-evidencing power.
We would say to the young man disturbed with scepticism,
Read your Bible. We would say to all who have difficulties
which they honestly wish removed, Study the Scriptures, med
itate therein by, day and by night
Nocturna versate maim, versale diurna.
It is the only true and lasting cure of scepticism, whether for
an individual or an age. It might be thought that there is
some risk in the prescription, and doubtless it may be so with
its first effects ; for the difficulties and stumbling-blocks may
show themselves before the deep verities have begun to arrest
and amaze the soul : but let there be perseverance, and the di
vine medicine will reveal its power ; " the sun of righteousness
will at length arise with healing in its wings."
At no time, we believe, are such thoughts more important
iv PREFACE.
than at present, Faith is weakened by habitual reliance upon
outward props, even when sound. The age, and all serious
minds of the age, are called to the inward study of the word
itself. In the signs of the times we seem to hear the voice that
came to Augustine in his memorable conversion-struggle in the
garden, " Take up the book and read take up the book and
read." It seems to say to us with a new emphasis, l&pevvare
rag ypa(f)d$, " Search the Scriptures," explore the Scriptures,
there are hidden treasures there, there are living waters there ;
study the Scriptures, they contain more than knowledge, the
words they speak unto you, " they are spirit and they are life."
The above thoughts are not made directly the subject of the
following book, but they suggestively pervade it, and may,
therefore, justly occupy its prefatory page.
The writer would merely add, that the present volume has
grown out of what was intended as an introduction to another
work on the Figurative Language of the Scriptures, and which,
with the divine permission, he hopes soon to give to the public.
Some of the thoughts in such intended introduction were
deemed worthy of being treated at greater length, and with
more liberty. Hence the expansion which has resulted in the
book here offered to the Church. It is hoped that it will be
found to occupy that ground of our common Christianity which
carries us above all narrow sectarianism. Whatever may be
its defects, in other respects, it is believed to be evangelical,
churchly, catholic in that true sense of Catholicism which is
acknowledged by all true believers.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE WORD, 2
CHAPTER II.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIBLE DIYINELY CHOSEN 13
CHAPTER III.
VERBAL INSPIRATION 27
CHAPTER IV.
THE DENIAL OF THE SUPERNATURAL 45
CHAPTER V.
THE OBJECTION MUST GO FARTHER NO DlVIXE KNOWLEDGE
OF THE FINITE 59
CHAPTER VI.
IF REVELATION is HUMAN, IT MUST BE MOST HUMAN 84
VI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
Is THE BIBLE LANGUAGE OBSOLETE ? 93
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ENDURING WORD 119
CHAPTER IX.
THE UNIVERSALITY OP THE SCRIPTURES 138
CHAPTER X.
THE BIBLE SUPERNATURAL 150
CHAPTER XI.
THE NATURAL OF THE SCRIPTURES A PROOF OF THE SUPER
NATURAL 180
CHAPTER XII.
THE INTERNAL TRUTHFULNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES 198
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED STATISTICAL CHARACTER OF THE
SCRIPTURES 221
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED PROPER NAMES . . .239
CONTENTS. yii
CHAPTER XV.
ARGUMENT FROM THE NATURAL CONTINUED THE BOLDEST OF
FORGERIES, OR WHOLLY TRUE 255
CHAPTER XYI.
THE NATURAL IN THE HISTORY OF CHRIST 273
CHAPTER XVII.
THE MYSTERIOUS CHASM IN CHURCH HISTORY 296
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE APOSTLE PAUL 328
CHAPTER XIX.
APPLICATION OF THE ARGUMENTTHE BIBLE A WORLD-BOOK 348
CHAPTER XX.
THE POWER OF THE BIBLE 364
NOTES . 385
EBB AT A.
Page 194, line 8, for Gibrch read Gibeah.
" 175, " 1, for
" 238, " 21, for
THE
DIVIDE HUMAN
IN THE SCRIPTUEES.
CHAPTER I.
THE WORD How used in Scripture "Written Incarnate The
Perfect Analogy Hie Word of Truth The Word of Life
The Term, " Son of Man "The Pure Humanity of Christ No
Man ever so Human The Humanity of the Written Word
Analogy in the Conception and Formation of each The Divine
in the Human All Revelation Anthropopathic, whether in the
Flesh or hi Language.
THE WRITTEN WORD THE INCARNATE WORD.
It is no mere fanciful or verbal analogy that
connects these two ideas. This is shown by
the fact that there are passages of Scripture
where it is difficult to distinguish between
them, or to determine with certainty that
one of them is the exclusive sense, or that
both are not comprehended in one essential
2
2 THE DIVINE HUM AN
and inseparable significance. There is the
sluyoz, * Afafaia^ and the ^6/og JZtorjc, the
Word of Truth, and the Word of Life. " Of
his will he begat us through the word of
truth" Is it the written word here, that is,
the truth conveyed in it as presented to the
mind, or is it " the Word that became flesh,"
Christ in the soul, not as truth merely, but
as a living power ? the Word of Truth, the
true Word by a well-known Hebraism so
common in the New Testament the true
Word in the sense of the real Word, the
living Word, the tfMpvroq Myog, or in-grow
ing Word. So. also, " Sanctify them through
thy truth, thy Word is truth." It is the
rationalist s favorite text. In interpreting it
he thinks only of truth, as the food of the
intellect, and that, too, not always as Bible
truth, but truth in general, reason, doctrine,
knowledge, as the regenerating, soul-nurtur
ing, sanctifying power. So is it most com
monly taken, even by the soberest theolo
gians ; but it is far from being certain that
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 3
this is the right interpretation, or, at least,
the only true interpretation of the language.
It was not the favorite interpretation of the
early Church ; it has not been the interpre
tation, at least the exclusive interpretation,
of the most spiritually-minded in later times.
"Sanctify them," consecrate them, set them
apart, in thy truth, eV %r\ akr}$da oov.
It may be doubted whether iv is instru
mental here, as commonly taken, or does not
have a deeper significance, as in that inex
haustible language, iv nvtv \ia% i, iv XQIOTW.
"Sanctify them in thy truth," says the Re
deemer, and then, as though to guard against
human misapprehension of this intercessory
pleading, the sentence is added, "Thy
Word," 6 Abyoc, 6 aog, the Word that is
thine, the Word that pre-eminently repre
sents the Infinite Father, the " Image of the
Invisible God," the Incarnate Word, that " is
the truth," the sanctifying truth, or the true
sanctifying Word, by union to which men
become holy, separate from the world, united
4 THE DIVINE HUMAN
to God, and "partakers of the Divine nature."
It is the Word of Truth, or the true Word,
not as a dogma, a thought, an intellectual
verity, though in relation to the highest and
most religious things, but an indwelling, en
ergizing presence, truth alive in the soul,
entering into and constitutive of its very
being. The other the rationalistic or dog
matic view has also its evidence. The
affirmation of the one aspect is not the de
nial of the other. Both may be united ;
both may be regarded as inseparable parts
of one idea, or the manifestation of the infi
nite in the finite ; for the highest truth we
have is anthropopathic ; it is a representa
tion to the sense, and in sense-conceptions,
of the ineffable and the eternal that can be
received in no other way. Thus it is that
the Word of Truth and the Word of Life may
be regarded as essentially connected ; but
certainly, if \ve attempt to separate them
logically in our minds, as we may do, care
should be taken not to convert the living
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 5
aspect into the figure, and make the naked,
abstract truth the higher and more power
ful reality.
The Written, the Incarnate Word. It may
be called analogy, but the analogy, the pro
portion, is perfect. As the divine to the
human nature in Christ, so is the divine
thought, the divine life in the Scriptures,
to their human form. It is perfect in kind,
perfect in degree ; it is analogous, ava loyov,
throughout. In both we have the infinite
in the finite, the divine in the human, the
ineffable in the forms of sense, the essential
as exhibited in the phenomenal, the absolute,
the eternal, the unconditioned as represented
in the relative, the temporal, the flowing
images of time and space. So in degree ;
the thought is carried to its ultimate in
each. Christ is not only human, but most in
tensely human. Never was there a man so
purely man as this "second man, the Lord
from heaven." Never man spake so humanly,
felt so humanly, loved so humanly, lived so
6 THE DIVINE HUMAN
humanly, died so humanly. Bone of our
bone, and flesh of our flesh, he had a purer
humanity than any of the other sons of
Adam, inasmuch as it was free from that
demoniac adulteration which had been pro
duced by sin. Hence is he so emphatically
called, and so delights to call himself, the
Son of Man. The term has more meaning
than it seems at first view to possess. In
the Syriac, the Saviour s native dialect, it is
the name for humanity itself. Bar nosho,
the Son of Man, is man generically ; the filial
part of the compound denoting the identity,
and continuance, and purity of the generic
idea. Hence is he appointed to judge human
ity (John v., 27), " because he is the Son of
Man." It is only from Christ s most perfect
manhood that we rise to the best thought of
his divinity. He could not have been so
perfect a man, so complete in his finiteness,
had he not been also divine and infinite.
The mystery no mind can solve ; the fact is
not only most glorious for our apprehension,
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 7
but the ground of all our hope. This is more
fully dwelt upon in a subsequent chapter ;
it is here stated as an introductory or ground
idea. And so of the written Word. The
analogy is without a flaw. No book is so
purely human as the Bible ; there is no one
in which the actors are so purely men. Its
language, idioms, figures, are all addressed to
our most intense, and therefore most univer
sal humanity. This is proof of its divinity.
Nothing but an inspiration in the human,
breathing through it, penetrating and sound
ing every part of it, could have so brought
out the human. Its language, therefore,
whilst most intensely ours, is, of all language,
the most divine. The philosophic or scien
tific styles of speech would have betrayed
their purely earthly origin, by their partial,
their one-sided, and therefore false anthro-
popathism ; for it would have been anthro-
popathism still, though not the divine an-
thropopathism of the Scriptures. The very
attempt to get above humanity would have
8 THE DIVINE HUMAN
produced a distorted and inhuman repre
sentation. The Scriptures, like Christ, come
down to us come down to us perfectly ;
they occupy the common plane of our nature.
Hence their language, if inspired at all, is
inspired throughout. The very words and
figures are full of the divine breath, and are
therefore to be searched for the divine
thought, the divine emotion, that fills out
this perfect humanity.
Thus, too, is the analogy perfect in respect
to the conception and generation of both
Words, or both these expressions of the
divine in human form. Christ s humanity
was conceived of the Holy Ghost, and born
of the Virgin Mary. It was thus a true
humanity, linked in its life-source with our
humanity, and growing out of it. We can
conceive of an artificial or mechanically-
formed Christ, if we may use the strange
expression, such as was fancied by some of
the old heretics who denied the miraculous
conception. We can think of a new being,
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 9
made outwardly and inwardly like the human
race so like that sense and thinking could
discover no difference something like Agas-
siz s fancy in respect to separate Adams or
centres of creation. But such a humanity,
if we may call it so, would not have been
our humanity. Such a being would not
have been our brother, any more than an
inhabitant of the remotest visible star. There
would be no common point in time and space
in which his life could be numerically one
with ours, or ours one with his. There could
have been no abiding generic unity. Such
a human, we say, would not be our human.
And so, on the other hand, can we conceive
of an artificial written word, or a mechanical
inspiration of the Scriptures. It might have
been written on the sky, or, what would
have been very much the same thing, by
men employed, not as thinking, feeling, con
ceiving, in all their freedom as men, but as
outwardly moved, as amanuenses or involun
tary utterers. But this would not have been
2*
10 THE DIVINE HUM AN
our Scriptures, our revelation, our most hu
man as well as most divine book. It would
not have been an inspiration in the human,
and through the human. Its thought must
link itself with our thought, its emotion with
our emotion, as light from light, and life from
life. Through the divine " o ershadowing "
power it is conceived in human feeling, nur
tured in human thinking, fashioned in human
imagery, and brought out at last in human
language. Thus, as ultimate products, and
through this linked series of generation, the
very words are inspired, not merely the
thoughts or emotions, as though these could
be separated from the words. For how can
there be feelings that do not fashion to them
selves images, and how can there be images
in the mind that do not arrange themselves in
thoughts, and how can there be thoughts that
do not take the form of words ! The process is
inseparable. The first inspiration, or inbreath
ing, has in it, not only virtually, but in design,
all the rest. Thus the very words of Scripture
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 11
are inspired. This is the great truth, the liv
ing truth, that forms the only basis of any
hopeful interpretation. The language is what
God meant it to be. It is his chosen method,
his best method, for revealing himself to
human minds. As the Infinite must be un
known, unthought, or clothe himself in the
forms of the finite, so this is the form he
has selected as the most human, the most
perfect in its finiteness. He has taken this
rather than the style of science and philoso
phy, even as Christ came in the purest and
most universal humanity instead of that
false anthropomorphism that might have
been preferred by the more ambitious forms
of human thought. Our philosophy may not
like the word ; there is none, perhaps, to
which the common irreligious thinking affects
to be more opposed ; but we cannot escape
from the thing itself ; and why should we wish
to escape from it ? All religion, all revela
tion, is a divine anthropopathism. No other
12 THE DIVINE HUMAN.
is conceivable. The Written Word, the In
carnate Word, however we may regard them
as differing in rank, are analogous manifesta
tions of the same condescension in the Infinite
and Ineffable Personality.
CHAPTER II.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIBLE DIVINELY CHOSEN Principle of
Interpretation " No Iota of the Law shall fail " Patristic In
terpretation The Great Bible Thoughts, then new The
Fathers found them everywhere The Modern View of the
Scriptures as a Fragmentary Book Traditional Interpretation
Christ in the Scriptures The Hero-Messiah Hieronymus
and Matthew Henry De Wette and Davidson The Profes
sional Scholiast and the true Homeric Interpreter The Unity of
the Scriptures Modern Interpretation finds too little in them.
THE previous thoughts furnish the ground
of a most important hermeneutical position.
The canon and its preamble may be thus
stated The language of the Bible is divinely
chosen its words and figures are designed to be
just what they are ; eloquia Domini, eloquia
cast a, argentum igne examinatum, probatum
terra, purgatum septuplum ; the words of the
Lord are pure words, like silver tried, seven
times refined." We may therefore search them,
14 THE DIVINE HUMAN
and rationally search them, for a divine signifi
cance. Not one jot or tittle of it shall fail to
reward our study. Christ has given us assur
ance of this ; the Light of the World hath
told us that the Scriptures are every where
full of Him and His salvation. He himself
found rich meanings lying under words and
forms of speech in which the Sadducean ra
tionalists of his day saw nothing. We may,
therefore, expect to discover in them " treas
ures new and old." We shall see " wondrous
things out of the divine law," and these will
be, not merely conceits of our own minds,
but thoughts substantial, living ideas, having
in themselves evidence that they are true
fruits, not of any mere human thinking, but
of the sfjupvroq M/oc, the " ingrowing word,"
the life-giving word that saves, that is heals,
makes sound, our souls, the word that co-
essentiates itself with our spiritual life, in dis
tinction from the knowledge that lies only in
the sense and memory, or, at the utmost,
only lodges in the chambers of the specula-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 15
live intellect, instead of entering into the
very growth of the spiritual constitution.
Interpretations grounded on such an idea
may, indeed, be visionary. Although there
is a divine warrant for thus studying the
Scriptures, there is none for the individual
human infallibility. Even as fancies, how
ever, if they be but the fancies of a sanctified
imagination, they may still have about them
the holy fragrance of a true original inspired
conception, and thus, in fact, be nearer the
inner truthfulness, than many a more scien
tific exegesis to which, critically, no objection
could be taken. This latter remark holds
true of many an interpretation of the earlier
Fathers that is held in contempt by the
modern scholiast. The Cross, the Regenera
tion, the Church, the New Life, the Spiritual
Temple, the New Humanity, the New Jeru
salem or City of God, these glorious ideas
then so fresh and wonderful, together with
their sacramental signs, they found in many
a text where the modern exegesis finds them
16 THE DIVINE HUMAN
not, and where we are compelled to say, the
modern exegesis is correct, dry, hard, and
sometimes, even worthless, as it may seern to
be. Thus Hieronymus, in his Commentaries,
often finds in the Scriptures what is not there
logically, or even metaphorically, at least in
the particular passage to which he assigns it.
Yet even in such cases, the interpretation is
but the vivid outgrowth of true Biblical
ideas ; that is, of ideas that men would never
have had without the Bible. They are living
seeds sown in the souls of holy men from the
"ingrowing word/ 7 and they come out every
where, often irregularly and in wild luxuriance.
The very extravagance of their germination
shows, not only the fertility of the new soil,
but the rich life that was in the original sem
inal power. Is it irrational to think that
more of this true power of the word may be
learned from minds in such a state than from
the colder hermeneutics, even though the
latter may give us the more correct interpre
tation of particular passages ?
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 17
These great Bible thoughts, as we have
said, were then new and wonderful. The
shadows of them had been forecast from the
sequestered Jewish religion, but their morn
ing splendors were then just rising above the
world s horizon. Hence it is not strange that
these earliest Christian writers found them
almost every where, lying under many a
figure and prophecy where a cooler, and,
perhaps, a less truly Bible-instructed imagi
nation, fails to detect their appearance. There
was to Christ a light in the Old Testament
that the blinded Sadducee saw not. Paul
had some key to the interpretation of the
older Scripture utterly unknown to the ra
tionalist, whether Jewish or Christian, and the
use of which seems mystical even to true
lovers of the Sacred Writings. And so these
holy men, in the early days of the Christian
life, had a method of interpretation which
we should study closely before we venture
rashly to reject it as wholly fanciful or absurd.
Some of their errors are very obvious ; we
18 THE DIVINE HUMAN
see very plainly where they were wrong ; and
yet how often is even the coldest reader com
pelled to wonder at the exceeding aptness of
the suggested thought, the strange coincidence
of idea, although he himself, perhaps, would
never have found it, never even suspected its
existence.
Is there not some tenable ground lying be
tween the free fancies of the earlier, and the
exceeding dry ness of the most modern inter
pretation ? We think there is, and that the
Christian mind will, ere long, find it. We
must make more of the Scriptures, or give
them up. One thing is certain : this ration
alistic interpretation, so called, cannot long
support a living Christianity. We say it
even of the better kind, such as that of the
school of Stuart, Davidson and others, for
whom we feel all respect. Some of these are
pious as well as learned men, but their piety
was nurtured under a Scriptural training
quite different from that which they are now
introducing. The traditional interpretation
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 19
of the Church, the living word, has entered
into their spiritual growth, and they cannot
wholly get rid of it. In others, who have
had less or more of this old spiritual manna,
the barrenness is becoming palpable and pain
ful. The school of which we speak has great
learning, and, in one sense, great value, but
that value is only relative. It must rapidly
depreciate unless regarded as subordinate to
something else held in reserve. Without this,
its philological interest, now its greatest
charm, must soon give way to some supersed
ing intellectual advance, and then there comes
a soul-famine, or we must go back to the old
traditional views of "Christ and his king
dom " as underlying all Scripture. We must
revive that idea of which the Patristic exe
gesis is so full, and in which some contemned
modern commentators, the "preaching com
mentators," as they are called, so greatly
abound, the idea of the Greater Temple, the
higher spiritual house, that the Greater Son
of David was to build for the Lord. We
20 THE DIVINE HUMAN
must take again, as the key of all right in
terpretation, that ancient myth, if any prefer
to call it so, of the Hero Messiah, who is an
nounced in the very beginning of Genesis,
the suffering, warring, conquering Messiah.
whose last great battle with the foe is so
graphically described in the closing book of
Revelations. It is all along one divine plan :
Qeov
ov
We trust it is not pedantic or irreverent to
accommodate to the immeasurably higher
idea this introductory language of the great
heathen poet. " The purpose of God has been
ever receiving its accomplishment since the an
cient day when they two first engaged in strife"
the dark Power of Evil, and He who was to
become the Woman s promised Seed, our
Prince Imrnanuel, Son of Man, and Son of
God He of whom it is said that even from
the beginning of earth s creation his " delight
was with the children of Adam." It is, in
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 21
fact this sacred fiovlri ever receiving its ful
filment, that proves the Bible, with all its
strange divisions into separate rhapsodies, as
they may seem to some, to be indeed the
work of one mind and on one great scheme.
It is "the Book of the Wars of the Lord,"
of the great Theophariies, of the Supernatural
in Humanity ; it is the History of Redemp
tion, no longer now the critics fragmentary
Iliad, but the most unique as it is immeasur
ably the grandest of epics.
"All things that are written in the Law,
and in the Psalms, and in the Prophets con
cerning me, must be fulfilled." This was the
ground of the Patristic interpretation. Such
was the ground of all interpretation esteemed
Christian until a very late period. The most
undisputed tradition of the universal Church,
the consent of Latin, Greek and Protestant
exegesis, the verdict, we may say, of an
eighteen hundred years Christianity, is not
to be rashly set aside without risking the very
idea of a supernatural revelation, and running
22 THE DIVINE HUMAN
into utter despair of any light from above. 1
If an idea so cardinal, so central, so catholic,
is given up as false, where is there another
in which we can expect to find the unity of
the Bible, and without unity, who can believe
it to be, in any sense, worth believing the
Book of the Lord.
The interpretations of the Fathers may be
often unbiblical in their special applications,
and yet the product of a biblical spirit having,
as a whole, a truer view of the mind of God
and Christ in revelation than is entertained
by the piece-meal critic who so proudly scorns
what he is pleased to style their defective
knowledge of hermeneutics. They do, in
deed, often find Christ where he is not in the
words ; their boasting contemners do, doubt
less, more frequently overlook him where he
is really present in the spirit. We may
admit that Hieronymus is often wrong,
oftener, perhaps, than the interpreter of the
modern school ; we may concede that Mathew
Henry is less learned (so it is the fashion to
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 23
speak of this humble Christian,) than De
"Wette or Davidson : still may we believe, on
the deepest and most rational grounds, that
both the Latin Father and the Puritan divine
had really a closer communion, of thought
as well as feeling, with the great Biblical
ideas, and were, on this account, with all their
errors, whether of knowledge or fancy, in the
truest and profoundest sense, the best inter
preters. The enthusiastic lover of Homer
may often see in his favorite poet what the
cooler scholiast disproves, and correctly dis
proves ; still we do not hesitate to maintain
not only that our rhapsodist has more of the
Homeric spirit but that he is also in respect
to all great and essential ideas the best
guide to the Homeric thought. The scholiast,
or the more modern critic of a certain school,
may have a keen eye for the digamma and
the metrical hiatus, he may be sharp in
scenting out anachronisms and supposed in
terpolations, he may bring out the best senses
of some long hidden archaisms, he may clear
24 THE DIVINE HUMAN
up many an interesting matter of ancient
custom, or of ancient geography ; but the
other has found more than this, even that
without which all the rest is comparatively
worthless, and to which the professional
scholiast may be wholly blind ; he has dis
covered in Homer that which makes him love
him and study him intensely for his own sake,
and not merely as a professional annotator
who would be equally laborious and correct
on any other ancient book in which there
might be a similar professional interest. The
wondrous bard has raised his whole soul to
a higher sphere of thought ; he is no longer
the mere scholiast ; he believes in Homer ; and
this faith carries him over all the difficulties
that annotators have ever raised in respect
to his matter or his text. Such enthusiastic
admiration may have had, in some respects,
a blinding effect ; it may have produced a
disposition to discover too much, or what may
not really exist, but it has also led to that
communion with the very soul of the great
IN THE SCKIPTUKES. 25
poet, to that interior thought or spiritual
sense, as we may truly call it, without which
scholia on Homer are of little more value
than though they had been wasted on the
most miserable of his Byzantine imitators.
We believe that this most modern inter
pretation is finding far too little in the Scrip
tures. Given by the divine mind, these holy
books must have in them a depth and a ful
ness of meaning that the human intellect can
never exhaust. If they are holy books, if
they are Sacrce Scripturce, as even the ne-
ologist conventionally styles them, then can
there be thrown away upon them no amount
of study, provided that study is ever chas
tened by a sanctified, truth-loving spirit, that
rejoices more in the simplest teaching, and in
the simplest method of teaching from God,
than in the most lauded discoveries of any
mere human science. Is it in truth the word
of God is it really God speaking to us?
then the feeling and the conclusion which it
necessitates are no hyperboles. We cannot
3
26 THE DIVINE HUMAN.
go too far in our reverence, or in our expec
tation of knowledge surpassing in kind, if
not in extent. The wisdom of the earth, of
the seas, of the treasures hidden in the rocks
and "all deep places," of the subterranean
world, or of the stars afar off, brings us not so
nigh the central truth of the Heavens, the
very mind and thought of God, as one par
able of Christ, or one of those grand pro
phetic figures through which the light of the
infinite idea is converged, whilst, at the same
time, its intensity is shaded for the tender
human vision.
CHAPTER III.
VERBAL INSPIRATION How is it to be understood ? The Me
chanical Theory Inspiration through Human Emotions and
Conceptions The Divine in the Human throughout The Last
Product inspired as well as the First In what Sense the Words
and Figures sometimes more specially designed than the Thought
itself Trite Truths Old Truths of the Conscience Recoined
in new and striking Language Difference between Moral and
Scientific Truth Extent or Comprehension sufficient in the one,
Intensity demanded in the other Algebraic Symbols The
Love and "Wrath of God The colder Ethical Language Even
this contains Figures, but they are dead Illustrations The Bare
Formula, " God is averse to Sin," compared with the Burning
Scriptural Language The Tender Language of the Bible Its
Intense Humanity Can the Infinite reveal Himself, at all, in
Language ?
IT must, then, be one of the most unfal
tering deductions of such a subdued spirit,
thus believing in revelation as a fact as well
as an idea, that not only its thought but its
very language is divine. This one may hold
without being driven to that extreme view
of verbal inspiration which regards the sacred
28 THE DIVINE HUMAN
penmen as mere amanuenses, writing words
and painting figures dictated to them by a
power and an intelligence acting in a manner
wholly extraneous to the laws of their own
spirits, except so far as those laws are merely
physical or mechanical. We may believe
that such divine intelligence employed in this
sacred work, not merely the hands of its
media, not merely the vocal organs played
upon by an outward material afflatus, not
merely the mechanical impressions of the
senses, or the more inward, though still out
wardly reflected images of the fancy and the
memory, but also the thoughts, the modes of
thinking, modes of feeling, modes of conceiv
ing, and, hence, of outward expression in a
word, the intellectual, emotional, and imagi
native temperaments, all their own, each
peculiar to the respective instruments, yet
each directed, controlled, made holy, truthful,
pure, as became the trustworthy agents for
the time being, of so holy a work. The face
is human, most distinctly human, yet each
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 29
lineament, besides its own outward expres
sion, represents also some part of that photo
graphic process that had its origin in the
world of light, and came down from " the
Father of Lights/ with whom there is no
parallax or shadow of turning.
In this sense, the language, the very words,
the very figures outwardly used, yea the
etymological metaphors contained in the
words, be they ever so interior, are all in
spired. They are not merely general effects,
in which sense all human utterances, and
even all physical manifestations may be said
to be inspired, but the specially designed pro
ducts of emotions supernaturally inbreathed,
these becoming outward in thoughts, and
these, again, having their ultimate outward
forms in words and figures as truly designed
in the workings of this chain, and thus as
truly inspired, as the thoughts of which these
words are the express image, and the inspired
emotions in which both thoughts and images
had their birth. One theory of verbal in-
30 THE DIVINE HUMAN
spiration begins with the language, as being
that which is first and directly given to the
inspired medium, that is, given to him out
wardly, by impressions on the organs of sense,
or by some action on the sensorium, or in
some mode, at least, that is outward to the
most interior spirit ; the other regards the
supernatural action as beginning with the
most interior spirituality, and ending with
language as the last outward result. It is a
product of a series, yet, as such product,
representative of the entire spiritual action
that has terminated in it, and having some
thing corresponding to every step of such
spiritual action in the whole course of its
procession from the primal generative emo
tion to the ultimate sound or sign. It is all
here, and a devout study of the language,
aided by the spirit that gave it, will carry
back the soul from the words to the images,
from the images to the thoughts, from the
thoughts to the spiritual emotion, or to com
munion with the living word, from whence
IN THE SCRIPTUEES. 31
the whole sacred stream has flowed. " With
tliee is the fountain of life. In thy light do we
see light. All the words of the Lord are pure;
they are as choice silver tried ; yea, seven times
purified"
Throughout the process it is, indeed, the
human soul energizing in its psychological
order, and according to the law of its free
dom, yet, from the very incipiency of the
inspiration, purified, elevated, guarded and
made unerring, by the power and presence of
a higher spirit. The difference is a wide one,
and yet this latter theory of verbal inspira
tion holds equally with the former that the
very words are inspired ; the peculiar lan
guage employed (and sometimes it is very
peculiar and characteristic of the individual
medium), the very figures, whether justified
by the rules of ordinary criticism or not, are
all chosen of God ; they are " choice words,"
tried words, designed to be just what they
are, and for special reasons in themselves, or
their contexts, and not merely as connected
32 THE DIVINE. HUMAN
with the general system of providential or
natural means in the regulation of the uni
verse. Like creation, it is a supernatural
beginning, entering into and setting in motion
a chain of sequences (natural if any choose
to call them so) to bring out results which no
previously created nature alone, whether old
or new, would ever have produced. Thus
regarded, the varied intellectual and emo
tional temperaments of Isaiah, of Ezekiel, of
Paul, and John, are as directly made use of
as the hands with which they write, the
mouths with which they speak, or the Greek
and Hebrew language they employ as the
most outward vehicle of their thoughts and
emotions.
In such a view of the matter we may even
regard the figures, and the peculiar forms of
language, and the emotions connected with
them, as being, sometimes, even more the
object of design than the bare thought itself,
that is, as having a greater share in the de
signed arrangements of the Divine communi-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 33
cation. The thought is indeed the substance,
but the manner of making it known, or, if
already known, of impressing it on the human
soul, may have been chiefly regarded in the
selection of means for bringing out the writ
ten revelation. Much of the Scriptures con
sists of declarations of truths that have their
seat already in the human conscience, of facts
that are otherwise stored in the human tra
ditional memory. In such cases the mode of
impressing them upon the soul, so that they
may sink into the interior life, in other words,
of giving them moral power, becomes the
chief thing. Trite truths are often the most
valuable truths, though sometimes divested
of force by their very triteness. They have
been worn, as the word implies, and they
must be recoined, sent anew to the mint,
have a strong and deep image stamped upon
the idea, that so the spiritual impression may
be restored. Among other variety of media,
God thus employs old truths themselves, as
the instruments of a new revelation. This
34 THE DIVINE HUMAN
recoining is not by way of poetical hyperbole ;
for all language and all figures fall short of
the intense reality of even an old and trite
truth respecting God. Every power of
human thought, or human imaging, is far
below the strength demanded when there is
an attempt to represent, worthily, the state
or the attitude of the Eternal Mind toward
moral good or evil. All such truths may be
very old, uttered in the conscience, proclaimed
through all history, and yet the thought, even
as held by the inspired mind, immeasurably
removed from the unspeakable, the incon
ceivable, reality. Logical abstractions here
will not do at all, and as the ineffable idea
cannot be conveyed to us in its essence or its
vastness, the thought must be gathered, and
condensed, and sent down to us through the
converging lens of human emotions and hu
man language, as feebly typical thereof.
Between moral truth and all other truth
there is an essential difference that cannot be
too much dwelt upon in our reasonings con-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 35
corning a revelation and its language. It is
a difference of altitude, we may say, in dis
tinction from that of breadth or superficial
quantity. Scientific or philosophic ideas,
when comprehended in their extent, or numeri
cal quantity of thought, if we may use the
term, are the same for all comprehending
minds. Moral ideas, on the other hand, have
another element, namely, of intensity, which
makes the same logical statement, with the
same logical significance, an immensely dif
ferent truth for different souls, or for the same
soul at different times. It is only aside from
this flowing element of intensity, or when it
is taken as zero, that they become, like the
ideas of science, the same for all intellects.
Take, for example, the oldest and most com
mon truth in theology or ethics, clothe it in
the most general or least impassioned lan
guage, get words as far removed as possible
from all personal or sense imagery : Deity is
averse to sin; or, Deity approves of the good.
It is, indeed, a tremendous truth in any
36 THE DIVINE HUMAN
language, but how different, we may say
again, for different souls, or for the same soul
in different moral states ! Two men may be
disputing about it ; their logical language be
trays no difference of abstract idea, it is per
fectly consistent in every mode and figure
through which they may choose to carry their
polemics, and yet, could the soul of each be
laid bare to the other they could not recog
nize each other s thought. Or, as an abstract
proposition it might command the assent of
two minds, and yet in what a different man
ner and measure may each receive, or lack,
the life of the truth. To the one the logical
terms deity, aversion, sin, are like the dx dy
symbols of the mathematician ; they are but
notions, and they answer their logical or
mathematical purposes equally well whatever
qauntities these symbols represent ; to the
other, every term of the logical proposition,
the subject, the predicate, the asserting cop
ula even, are "words that breathe and
thoughts that burn," into the very soul. God
IN THE SCKIPTURES. 37
is averse to sin, he loves the pure and holy.
There must be in such an aversion, and in
such a love a burning intensity corresponding
to the ineffable greatness of the ideas, and
the ineffable glory of Him of whom they are
predicated. God is either wholly indifferent
to what we call moral action, and then, of
course, all moral ideas of every kind are but
an empty delusion, or there is in the wide
universe no wrath, as there is no love, that
can be compared for intensity to that of
Deity. They are measures of each other ;
as is the glowing heat, so is the melting ten
derness ; there is no love if there is no aver
sion, and this aversion is either an infinites
imal quantity, it is nothing at all, or it is all
that Scripture includes, and more than we
can conceive, in those fearful words, "the
wrath of God."
The abstract logical declaration may be
given to the reason, and the reason may
logically infer the infinity. Still it is a specu
lative infinity ; the greatness, thus computed,
38 THE DIVINE HUMAN
is a mere mathematical greatness ; it is like
the chemist s talk of caloric, or the optician s
discourse of light. For divine truth, there
fore, as distinguished from the natural and
the speculative, there is needed that which
"surpasses knowledge," even the strength
and life of the spiritual emotion. Otherwise
we philosophically resolve the wrath into a
mere show of wrath, and that as a mere
police providence for the prevention of evil
which after all our naming is, on such a view,
only physical evil, whilst we resolve the love
into an intellectual approbation, which be
comes as morally powerless as it is, in fact,
philosophically unintelligible, approbation
of right having nothing by which it can be
logically differenced from the approbation of
mathematical or physical truth, and, in fact,
the very idea of right running down into a
mathematical conception of quantity, or cal
culation of physical pleasures and pains. If
such a truth of Deity, then, is to be given to
human minds at all, as a moral truth, that
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 39
is, as a power instead of a notion, as a life
instead of a dead formula, it must be
through human language and imagery, as pre
sented in the most vivid manner to human
conceptions. In Divine truth, it must be kept
in mind, it is depth, it is intensity we want,
more than comprehensiveness, or mere com
pleteness of logical statement. Hence the
anthropomorphism and anthropopathism of
the Bible. Hence the awful Hebrew figures,
the t| Ynn "the burning heat of this great
wrath." And yet, what is called the bare
abstract or ethical proposition, as expressed
in terms purposely chosen, it may be, on ac
count of their supposed mildness and ab-
stractness, may be found to have a tremen
dous power, if we only carry our conceptions
down to the roots of the words, or transfer
the same image from a language where it has
become trite that is, worn and defaced to
another, where it comes out new and full of
its old life. Thus the declaration : " God is
averse to sin," might be chosen by some as
40 THE DIVINE HUMAN
being the milder mode of speech. It does
not sound so harsh as when we say, " God
hates." And yet, in truth, how fearful the
figure of these mild words when transferred
to Deity : the divine aversion! God s turn-
ing away his face ! It is something he can
not look upon. There is no such turning
away in nature ; there is no such repulsion
in all physical law. It reminds us of the
language of Pindar when he speaks of the
punishment of Tartarus.
voi (T anQocioQarov ox/fcovrt nbvov?
or of Habakkuk s strong picture " Thou art
of purer eyes than to behold evil. Thou
canst not look upon iniquity." Compare also
Isaiah 3 : 8, "Their tongue and their doings
are against the Lord, to offend the eyes of his
glory" How sharp and clear it there comes
out, and yet it is the same image so worn,
yea, almost obliterated, in what seems our
1 Pindar Olymp. 2, stroph. 4 : " A woe the eye cannot
endure."
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 41
milder and more abstract phrase. It is this
thought, too, that gives so much strength to
the opposite figure as we so frequently find
it in the earnest supplications of the Psalm
ist
" 0, turn thcc to my soul,"
and that ineffable image, or image of the in
effable, "Lift thou upon us, Lord, the
light of Thy countenance: hide not Thy
face from me ; put not Thy servant away in
wrath ; Thou hast been my helper ; leave
rne not, cast me not away, thou God of
my salvation." The ethical formula has been
rendered cold and dead in the hands of the un
feeling logician, but when breathed upon by
the Living Spirit, and thus recoined and
stamped anew for the living soul, it has all
the emotion of the most impassioned lan
guage, " Ne avertas faciem luam a me" "
turn not thou away." Thine aversion is death.
" In thy favor is life ;* " in thy presence there
is fulness of joy for ever more."
42 THE DIVINE HUMAN
The reasoning employed applies not only
to language expressive of the stern and fear
ful in the divine relations to us, but also to
those moving expostulations that figuratively
clothe themselves in the most tender of hu
man images and emotions. What words
shall express the love of God to his redeemed?
" Can a woman forget her sucking child, that
she should not have compassion on the son
of her womb ? Yea, she may forget, yet
will not I forget thee, saith the Lord : I have
graven thee on the palms of my hands ; thy
walls are ever before me." Is this the lan
guage of the Infinite ? Does the Eternal
Mind thus speak to us, not only through
thoughts that necessarily run into the molds
of the temporal and the finite, but in figures
and images so purely, so intensely human ?
Yes, we answer, it is the language of the In
finite, when He converses with the finite.
But are these His very words ? Yes, His
very words, chosen and arranged in every
lineament and fibre of their Hebrew tender-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 43
ness. Why not? Why stumble at surface
objections when the whole difficulty lies far
deeper. It is involved in the question : Can
the Infinite reveal Himself at all in language
in its widest sense of speech or outward sign,
or in short, through any finite medium ?
Why talk of anthropopathism, as if there
were some special absurdity covered by this
sounding term, when any revelation conceiv
able must be anthropopathic. If made sub
jectively as some claim it should be made if
made at all that is, to all men directly,
through thoughts and feelings inwardly ex
cited in each human soul without any use of
language, still it must be anthropopathic.
There is no escape from it. Whatever comes
in this way to man must take the measure of
man, and every essential objection now made
would still have the same essential force.
The thoughts and feelings thus aroused would
still be human, and partake of the human
finity and imperfection. In their highest
THE DIVINE HUMAN.
state they will be but shadows of the infinite,
figures of ineffable truths. Carry out the
objection, then, and it is a denial of the pos
sibility of any communication between God
and man.
CHAPTER IY.
THE DENIAL OF THE SUPERNATURAL This objection of Anthro-
popathism involves the Denial of the Supernatural It allows of
nothing aside from the One Total Movement of the Universe
The Human Soul demands the Supernatural The Horror of
Naturalism Analogy between the Divine and the Human Su
pernatural Credibility of the Reason as opposed to the Credi
bility of the Sense The Objection to Miracles grounded solely
on the Latter The Real Wonder, Why does not God often er
speak to us ? The Supernatural in the Morning and Noon of
the World Will come again in the Evening Has its place in
the Great Chronology, or Order of the Ages.
BUT we cannot stop here. Such denial of
all intercourse between the Infinite and the
finite mind can only end in pantheism, or the
perfect identification of God with the world.
As there can be no special, so there can be
no supernatural manifestation of any kind.
There can be no action in nature, or upon
nature, that is not through the whole, and so
truly an action of the whole. There is no
46 THE DIVINE HUMAN
supernatural ; there can be no supernatural.
Now the man who asserts this, unless he in
tends the merest play of words, making every
thing to be natural simply because it is some
how in the universal system of things, has
undertaken a defence of a position more in
credible, that is, more opposed to the common
judgments and feelings involved in the very
laws of our thinking, than all the legends of
all the revelations, real or supposed, that
have ever claimed the credence of mankind.
This argument of incredibility is commonly
used against the miraculous, but it may be
turned the other way, at least in one, and
that its highest, aspect. The credibility of
sense, we may admit, is much opposed to any
special movement in nature, or to any inter
ruption of its totality ; the credibility of
reason, if we may employ that term for some
of the most interior as well as most catholic
decisions of the soul, is powerfully in the
other scale. There is something within us
that demands the supernatural, that creates
IN THE SClilPTUKES. 47
a disposition to believe in it, yea, an impas
sioned longing for it, even though that long
ing be so seldom sensibly gratified. It is as
much a part of our spiritual constitution as
the habitual belief in nature s regularity ; it
is even a stronger and more interior acting of
the soul, inasmuch as it has maintained itself,
in all ages, against so much of adverse out
ward association. It is, in this respect, like
the kindred belief in the soul s existence after
death. In either case, there is something
within us that holds us up, and carries us on,
in spite of sense. The most visible of phe
nomena are against the one ; common expe
rience opposes the other ; yet both hold on
their way in the world, though miracles are
few and far between, and fewer still come
back from the unknown land. Generations
pass away and are seen no more ; all things
seem to continue as they were from any
known beginning, and yet the disposition to
believe, and the belief itself, are strong as
ever. Instead of asking the aid of any in-
48 THE DIVINE HUMAN
ductive reasoning for its proof, it defies the
power of any such reasoning, or of &\\y rea
soning, to drive it from the human soul. So
also is there a "law in our minds " warring
with the common experience of the slow un
varied movements of the physical world.
We see the strength of it when science has
laid bare evidence of what looks like some
ancient break in nature s movements. It is
one of the great charms of our modern ge
ology. The naturalist, with all his fondness
for talking of law and causation, cannot con
ceal the interest he takes in such discovery.
He loves to find it so ; it is not against his
expectation when he does find it so. The
pleasure he experiences reveals the law of
his spirit, higher, deeper, and more unchang
ing than any law of nature. The discovery,
we say, when made, is found to be just what
might have been expected ; it is in the highest
degree rational, yea, truly credible ; and even
some who are most opposed to the Scriptural
miraculous as bringing too near the idea of a
IX THE SCRIPTURES. 49
personal God, do yet rejoice in a supernatural
that is so ancient and so far off.
The thought of being ever buried in this
shoreless, bottomless, sea of nature, of being
as truly in it and parts of it whilst in our
thinking, conscious state, as when our dead
atoms are dispersed throughout its measure
less abyss, is suffocating to the rational soul.
It is a living death, and how any thinking
mind can bear it, yea, even be fond of it, is
the real marvel. Supernatural ourselves, as
we consciously are, we may reasonably ex
pect, and mankind have ever thus expected,
to be conversed with, sometimes, in a super
natural manner. Constantly performing acts
in opposition to, as well as in accordance with,
the inward and surrounding nature, nothing
is more natural, if we may use a seeming
paradox, than that we should expect a similar
display of power from the higher or super
human plane. To our microscopic vision ; it
is, indeed, true, that the greater divine move
ments must necessarily appear immensely
4
50 THE DIVINE H U M A N
slow, or rather, with immense intervals be
tween them as computed by our time meas
ures, and as compared with our own rapid
changings ; but shall God ever be bound
where we are free? "Is there in us, 77 says
Cicero, repeating the argument of Socrates,
"Is there in us mind and reason, and shall
there be mind nowhere else in the universe ? "
It is an argument for the existence of a God,
but it is also an argument for the divine su
pernatural and its manifestations. Necesse
est Deum haec ipsa habere majora. Is there
in us a power of will, and do we exercise
that power to control the physical forces
around us, within certain limits, so that they
do not produce the effects they would have
produced without this uncaused spiritual in
tervention, is there in us, we say, such a
supernatural power, and shall it be nowhere
else in the worlds above us in God, or in
higher superhuman beings acting as the min
isters of God ?
The analogy, it may be said, is not con-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 51
elusive : it is but analogy, after all, and we
cannot thus reason from the finite to the in
finite. And yet, if it be true analogy, and
not mere fancy, it must have a meaning. It
is ava ?w6/ov, it is in ratio, or reason, with
something higher, and we must infer from it
that there is that in God which corresponds
to this contra-natural or spiritual action in
man. This reasoning from ourselves is no
sense induction, like that which denies the
credibility of the supernatural, or of a revela
tion to the finite, but is truly a priori, as
grounded on ideas we find within us, or laws
of thought out of which we cannot think.
If the finite rational soul is an image of God,
then such analogy, though falling immeasura
bly short, is, at least, in the true direction ;
it is in the line of the absolute verity, and
this is much, however remote the sighted ob
ject, or however reduced the scale on which
the sighting index turns. The philosophic
abstraction, on the other hand, commencing
with the unknown infinite, may be a total
,52 THE DIVINE HUMAN
aberration from the very beginning. In the
other view, the compass points right, how
ever distant the unseen pole to which it
tends. It is like the mathematician s infinite
series ; we may not count their number, but
we know the law of the final term. Hence
may we rationally conclude, that God has
given for our guidance this analogy or pro
portion of ideas ; and if so, it must have this
closing cadence, or else there is an abrupt
and painful break, an unresolved dissonance
in the harmony of thought. In a mere fan
ciful analogy, such dissonance is soon de
tected ; but this is one of the most perfect
kind, the more magnified, the more correct ;
it is without a deviation or a suspension as
far as our reason traces it ; it is, too, in most
perfect accordance with Holy Writ, and with
that language its author has chosen as most
peculiarly and deeply human. Even if it is
not conclusive, as they say, even if we can
not follow it out to the point of logical ne
cessity, that is, to that last ter n in the series
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 53
where one idea is seen clearly lying within
the other, still, as analogy merely, it accounts
for the universal feeling, and this is all that
is demanded for our present argument of
credibility.
The supernatural is credible. It has its
ground in that law of thought which is most
catholic in our humanity, which is most in
wardly removed from all surface differen
ces ; and hence it is so hard to understand
men who seem to be of the opposite temper
ament, who believe that all is nature, and
seem to be fond of so believing. The won
der, in fact, is not so much the occurrence of
the supernatural as its rarity. Why is there
not more of it ? Why this painful reserve ?
All right, doubtless, so faith answers ; for it
requires faith sometimes, a divine faith we
mean, to have a true belief in the natural as
well as in the supernatural. But still the
spirit asks, and may ask with reverence and
humility, "Why standest thou afar off? * 7
Why do not the heavens open ? Why does not
54: THE DIVINE HUMAN
G-od talk to us more frequently ? Why does
He not speak to us in our own human lan
guage, our own human thoughts and feel
ings, instead of those dull unchanging signals
of nature that carry the general dispatches
of the universe, (the physical universe with
its exclusively physical intelligence) but have
no news for us, no special word for us, no
look of recognition for us, nothing, in short,
to make us feel that we are either generic-
ally or individually before the Infinite Mind,
that God is thinking of us, not merely as
present somewhere in His vast and total
thought, but as a race remembered, as indi
viduals known by name, known in our finity,
known, in some sense, " even as we know."
If the vision tarry we wait long for it ; we
may never see it in our brief earthly stay,
but we cannot surrender the thought. To
believe that there never has been anything
above nature, that there never will be any
thing out of nature, our souls, if we have
souls, tell us is nothing but sheer atheism.
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 55
We may believe in " a God who hideth him
self," but not in one who hideth himself for
ever. The Scriptures do, indeed, tell us that
"God covereth himself with light as with a
garment," but this is very different from be
ing bound in an everlasting physical causa
tion without interruption or suspension. This
enrobing light is His supernatural glory, and
finite eyes may see it, although they may
never approach the direct vision of Him who
dwelleth therein. But the thought of an end
less nature is insupportable. Such an eter
nal future would seem to necessitate, in our
thinking, a like eternal past of uninterrupted
physical causation ; and then, where are we ?
Every argument for the existence of God is
gone ; the very notion is gone. If, on the
other hand, there have been beginnings and
transitions in the past, then will there be
again beginnings, and transitions, and inter
ruptions, and suspensions in nature, in other
words, displays of supernatural power. A
little thinking shows us how much more rap-
56 THE DIVINE HUMAN
idly the shadow must move, or seem to move,
over the plain of our magnified earthly his
tory, than on " the dial plate of eternity," and
so we rationally make allowance, in our esti
mate, for the chronological rates in the vast
divine epochs as compared with our swiftly
passing days. The immensely enlarging lens
of our microscopic sense is all filled with the
vision of the natural, but our reason cannot
give up the thought of the higher move
ment. We cannot surrender the idea, that
in this greater chronology there are truly
" years of the right hand of the Most High, 7
great transition periods wherein &lt;; things do
not continue in all respects as they were/ 7
but the scenes are shifted for the introduc
tion of new acts in the drama of the ages.
We cannot yield the thought of the super
natural, not only as having been in the days
of our fathers when the world was new, but
as expected still to be verified somehow, if
not in our own individual experience, at least
somewhere, and at some time, in the ex-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 57
perience of the slow, long-living race. In
the evening, as in the morning and noon
of humanity, there will be the supernatural
light. It must come again before the career
of earth is run, or surely then, at that great
rtvvv&ua TOV aitivos, or "reckoning of the
ages," when the natural, "which is first,"
shall be found to have been only a patient
training, or a training of patience, for the
higher spiritual experience. Is, then, the
supernatural credible in any sense that is,
may the Infinite Mind and Power ever act
out of the whole of nature, or manifest him
self to the finite in any partial separate finite
acts or forms, then is it credible that He may
so manifest himself to the human soul, and
thus converse with the human soul. Then
is revelation credible, a revelation in lan
guage, a written revelation, a book revela
tion. If reason is not shocked at this, if rea
son demands it, though sense or the majority
of experiences be against it, then is it also
credible and rational, yea, demanded by this
4*
58 THE DIVINE HUMAN.
higher law of the spirit, that such revelation
should be in the language that is the most
human, in words, figures, and representative
phenomena, most obvious, most primary, to
the universal human race.
CHAP T E 11 Y .
THE OBJECTION MUST GO FARTHER NO DlVIXE KNOWLEDGE OF THE
FINITE God cannot know our Knowledge We are known only
in the Total Idea The God of the Bible transcends this Ho
Thinks our Finite Thoughts as well as his own Eternal Thought
Feels Our Feelings Knows our Consciousness "In Him we
Live, and Move, and Are" The Scripture Pantheism The False
Pantheism The real Danger, the Denial of the Divine Personality
The Seclusion of the Soul God knows it by a knowledge, not
A Posteriori from Effects, or A Priori from Causes, but Present
and Ever Knowing Does God know our Sin as we know it?
The Great Mystery The Transcendental Objection itself Anthro-
popathic Because "We cannot ascend to God, therefore, it says,
He cannot come down to us The New Platonic Essence, above
Knowing as above Being Known The Scientific theism Con
trast of the Bible Language Sublime Ascriptions of Personality.
BUT neither is there any stopping here.
He who makes such denial of the anthropo-
pathic, and hence of the supernatural, as
being both of them impossible or irrational,
must take another step. If G-od cannot so
separate himself from nature as to make a
revelation of the finite, and to the finite, then
he cannot be truly said to know the finite as
60 THE DIVINE HUMAN
such. For thus to know, according to any
conception we can have of it, and on which
we can ground any assertion respecting it, is
as much finite as the thinking or speaking
connected with the knowing or the making
known the knowledge. The Infinite intelli
gence becomes thus an intelligence only of
infinity and totality. It cannot think the
finite or the partial. They are utterly below
it, and thus far away out of its sight, even as
the infinite is above us. We are, therefore,
unknown to God in any such way, either in
degree or kind, as we are known to ourselves.
So far, indeed, as the knowing, or mode of
knowing, whether regarded as action or pas
sion, is a part of the knowledge, it may be
said we are utterly unknown to him. He
has no scientia of our conscientia ; He does not
know our consciousness ; for surely he cannot
know our knowledge all our knowledge
unless he know it, too, as we know it. He
cannot think our thoughts as we think them ;
and so it would follow that he cannot truly
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 61
think them as they are. He cannot think
our thoughts, as we cannot think his, and so
it would follow, that as we cannot know the
divine, so he cannot know the human as well
as the divine. Now who shall dare assert
this ? " Who hath so known the mind of the
Lord," that under the pretense of elevating,
he should thus actually venture to limit the
divine knowledge. Wherein, too, is this
transcendental conception any better than
the extra-mundane conceit of the sensual
Epicurean ? That is anthropopathic, it says ;
it is a representation of sensual ease yielding
up to nature the care of the world. But
may there not be a similar charge against
the loftier view, as it would assume to be ?
With all its affected spirituality, it becomes
itself only another form of this so much
dreaded anthropopathism ; it limits Deity in
his relations to us by the same rule that
limits us in our relations to him. We cannot
rise to God, and therefore, it anthropopathi-
cally reasons, He cannot come down to us.
62 THE DIVINE HUMAN
But the God of the Scriptures transcends
any such limiting conception. " He inhabit-
eth eternity ;" He filleth all things." Philo
sophy may talk ever so proudly, she can
never go beyond this. His unchangable
abode is the infinity of time and space, arid
yet he thinks the finite truly, as finite, and
as it is thought by the finite intelligence.
This is the transcending mystery of the Bible ;
it presents both these wondrous aspects of
Deity, and that, too, without betraying, on
the part of the divine messengers, any feeling
of dissonance, any misgiving sense of con
tradiction. Grod is so far off that all differ
ences of space and rank vanish before him,
and yet is he " nigh, very nigh to every soul
that calleth upon him." " The Heaven
and Heaven of Heavens cannot contain him,
and yet he hath a house on earth where he
records his name." "All nations are as noth
ing before him, yea, less than nothing and
vanity," and yet he hath a people, a chosen
people, a very peculiar people, whom he
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 63
guides with a cloud by day and a pillar of
fire by night. " He dwelleth in the high and
holy place, yet hath he respect unto the con
trite and the lowly." He hath given all
things their law, and yet "he stoopeth down,"
in the minuteness of his providence, to behold
every event that takes place in the heavens
and in the earth. " He knows the end from
the beginning. 77 In that Eternal Mind lies
ever undivided the total idea, the total move
ment, the total time of the immeasurable
universe ; "all things stand forever according
to his unchanging ordinance ;" "He maketh
peace in his high places," and yet he hears
continually the prayers of his elect. " He
putteth their tears in his bottle," "He
numbereth the hairs of their heads." Both
views belong to the greatness as well as the
harmony of the divine character, great in
its condescending depths, as in its ineffable
height. God sees all things in their causes,
he sees also all things in their effects and as
effects, even as they are seen and known by
64 THE DIVINE HUMAN
us : He sees them in the infinite, total idea,
He sees them also as parts, and in their ever
varied, ever varying relations : He sees them
as ever present, He sees them in their flow
ing successions ; He sees them in their time
less being, before all worlds, He sees them
as they are carried out in the utmost finity of
their sense or phenomenal generation. He
is the -^xn/^Toc;, the Immovable, whom Aris
totle sought to comprehend "He changeth
not" and yet, as the same philosopher at
tempts to describe him, so the Scriptures set
him forth : He is the a()/^ r\c, r^ ovoia
Ivfyyua, 1 the Eternal Principle, whose very
essence is energy; "He speaks and it is
done, He commands and it stands ;" He is
ever acting in all the changing appearances
of nature ; " He sendeth forth his command
ment upon the earth ; his Word runneth very
swiftly."
The other view affects to be the philoso
phical one ; it assumes to take the transcend-
1 Aristot. Metaph. xi. (xii.) c. 6.
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 65
ing aspect of deity, excluding altogether the
side that is turned to us, the finite side of the
Infinite, as we need not fear to call it, or
that in which God manifests himself to us as
finite beings. It looks upon the Scriptural
style as a mere accommodation to lower
minds, and yet it is itself as deficient in gran
deur as in moral power. Its deity is an ab
stract idol as false as any that was ever imag
ined or fashioned by the sense, as much
removed from all sympathy and all commu
nion as the veriest block that was ever wor
shipped in a heathen temple. But " our
God is a great God and a great king above
all Gods ; in His hand lie all the deep places
of the earth ;" in that fathomless intelligence
lie all the knowledges, and experiences, and
even sentiencies of finite earthly souls. Why
should we fear to take this ground. We call
God the Infinite Reason, the all comprehend
ing reason, why is He not also the all pervad
ing Knowledge, the eternal Experience, the
universal Sense? If we are made in the
66 THE DIVINE HUMAN
image of God, then must there be that in the
Original, which, however transcending, cor
responds to what is essential in the features
and constitution of the spiritual copy. "In
Him we live, and move, and have our being "
If this be pantheism, it is the pantheism of
the Scriptures, and we need not be afraid of
it. There is another kind that has grown
out of aversion to the deeply religious idea
of the divine personality, and which would
mimic the great truth whilst stripping it of
all that would make it precious. But "our
God is greater than the God " of the false
pantheism, greater than the philosopher s
transcendental deity. He is all-mighty, and
can do all this that they, in the weakness of
their human conception, deny to Him. He
can have His infinite and, at the same time,
his finite side, of being. He has his own
eternal thought, and can also think, and does
constantly think the thoughts of time. He
is all knowing, and, therefore, more intim
ately present in our souls, yea spiritually
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 67
nearer to us, we may say, than we are to
ourselves.
Do we sufficiently think what is meant by
the proposition, God knows us? It cannot
be merely the knowledge of induction, that
is, of causes from effects, however accurate
and complete ; it must be something more
than the converse or complement of this, or
the a priori knowledge of effects from causes.
It cannot be perfect knowledge, an all know
ing of all that we are, unless there be an
ever present spiritual beholding, a constant
actual knowing of our knowledge, and think
ing of our thoughts. It is an idea most
precious as well as fearful, and we may,
therefore, dwell upon it for a moment, though
leading to a seeming digression. Who is so
unthinking as not to be sometimes impressed
with that great mystery of our spiritual being,
his owji utter isolation from an all-surround
ing universe ? How perfect the seclusion in
which every individual finite soul dwells apart
from every other ! We do, indeed, hold an
68 THE DIVINE HUMAN
imperfect intercourse by telegraphic signals
passing through matter, but walls of adamant
could not more effectually separate us from
direct spiritual communing than the state in
which God has created us. There is some
thing impressively solemn in this deep seclu
sion, this everlasting loneliness. No other
soul knows us ; no other finite spiritual eye
has ever seen us ; the nearest friend has only
inferred our existence ; like the natural be
lief in a God, "our invisible things are un
derstood from the things that are seen," even
our inward power and humanity. The
thought is sometimes our pride ; it places in
such gloomy grandeur each soul s inviolable
individuality. It may also give rise to a
feeling tinged with melancholy. 0, could
another know us, we are sometimes ready to
exclaim, just a^ we know ourselves ; we would
be willing even that he should know oar sins,
could he also feel and know, to the fullest
extent, all the palliations to which they are
entitled in human eyes.
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 69
The most unthinking must have some ex
perience of this. There are times when we
are lonesome, insupportably lonesome, and
then, is it fear, or joy, or are they both com
bined in the thought that there is, indeed,
one who does thus know us. It may startle
us when we think of all that is to be seen,
and more, perhaps, than our own inner sense
has ever seen, in that deep dwelling of our
spirituality ; truly is there pain, but this is
not the only feeling ; there may be consola
tion in the thought, yea even strength and
joy. There is one Soul that knows us, per
sonally, intimately, thoroughly, knows us
not by media, by signals outward or interior,
not by induction from effects, or by fore
knowledge from causes, but by direct and
immediate presence, by more than presence,
even by spirit-pervading, interpenetrating
spirit, not only an occasional or partial be
holding, but an unintermitted knowledge of
our all, our sense, our memory, our intelli
gence, our consciousness, even when least
70 THE DIVINE HUMAN
sensible, least known, least conscious to our
selves. il Thou hast possessed my reins ;
thou knowest my thought ; when I awake I
am still with thee. 77 And then to think of
this Soul thus pervading all other souls,
forming the universal medium, if we may use
a term so much profaned, of all spiritual ex
istences, and yet losing nothing of that dis
tinct personality which it presents to each,
nor impairing, in the least, that distinct in
dividuality with which every finite spirit
stands before the Infinite. There is in such
a view, all that the highest philosophy can
demand, and yet all that meets our lowliest
human thought, our deepest human sym
pathy. There are indeed some startling
questions here : How can God thus know us
thoroughly, without knowing our sin, and how
can he know our sin, as it is, unless he know
it as we know it, that is with con-scientia, and
how can he thus know it, and yet be sinless ?
since in our case we cannot conceive of the
knowledge without the stain. It is like the
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 71
other great mystery of the Redemption :
How Christ can take our guilt and yet be
guiltless ? They are questions that must be
left unsolved, and yet the great truth is one
we cannot yield : God is of purer eyes than
to behold evil, yet must he know it with a
deep intelligence transcending that of any
other mind in the universe. We inevitably
fall into pantheism and a pantheistic imper
sonality, unless we hold fast to the truth,
that there is no knowledge of the finite, and
no knowing by the finite, that is not at the
same time perfectly known, both as knowledge
and knowing, as thought and thinking, to the
Infinite One.
The transcendental objection, we say, does
itself limit the divine perfection by allowing
of no other aspect than that of the eternal
and universal. It would pretend to magnify
Deity by absorbing all things into the infinite.
"But our God is the great God," from the
very fact that he can thus withdraw, as we
may say, within His infinity, while still re-
72 THE DIVINE HUMAN
maining infinite. There is a distinction in
the divine personality (so revelation teaches)
by which he can do this, whether we can un
derstand it or not. He can remain in his
high, immovable, prime causation, whilst yet
"the Divine Word," which is God himself,
"runneth very swiftly " through all nature
and all natural worlds. Yea, what seems a
greater mystery, he can abide in his eternity,
his immutability, his sublimity, and yet hum
ble himself, and take the form of man, and
the thought of man. He thus comes down
to us in the written Word, so full of the di
vine majesty, the divine holiness, and yet so
purely, so intensely human. He comes still
nearer to us in the incarnate Word, "the
Word that became flesh and dwelt among
us ;" and nearer still when Christ took upon
himself our sins, and carried our sorrows,
making himself our sacrifice, and thus be
coming our "Great High Priest," who, even
now, " in the highest heavens," can be touch
ed with a fellow feeling of all our infirmities.
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 73
Ineffable is the mystery involved in all this,
but the fact can be clearly stated, and rea
son must assent to the glory of the truth,
even where it utterly fails to comprehend.
We cannot ascend to Heaven, but God can
come down to us ; we cannot become divine,
but it is within his almighty power to become
human, and thus lift us up to communion
with himself whilst we still remain human.
We can only take these thoughts as they are
revealed to us in the Scripture. What, how
ever, we cannot understand in its positive na
ture, may be distinctly and rationally summed
up in its negative aspect. True it is, then,
we say and no transcendental thinker can
go beyond the Bible thought in this true it
is, that as the heavens are high above the
earth, so is God s thinking above our think
ing," and yet if he cannot also think our
thoughts as we think them, feel our feelings
as we feel them, know our knowledge as we
know it, whilst, at the same time, dwelling ev
ermore in his own high, unchangeable intelli-
5
74; THE DIVINE HUMAN
gence, if God cannot do this, then arc there
"deep places 7 in his universe of soul un
known to him, unknown to him as they truly
are ; then his very infinity becomes his im
perfection, his limitation, and there is really
no divine knowledge of finite things accord
ing to any possible human thought of it. We
have run up, or run down, to that hyper-
noetic essence of the later Platonists which
makes the mind of God to be as much above
all personal knowing, as all being known.
How far this blank nihility of thought in
respect to the divine intelligence is from athe
ism, at least in any moral sense, it would
be hardly worth our while to inquire. In
finity thus regarded is impersonality, and it
is this and not the mere pantheistic idea that
annihilates all religion. There is, as we have
said, a Scripture pantheism ; there is a true
sense in which " God is all and in all ;" there
is a true sense in which it is said, "In him
we live, and move, and are ;" but this recog
nizes his personality and our personality as
IN THE SCKIPTURES. 75
call the more distinct from the very fact of
the inter-subsistence. "Because He lives we
shall live also." Those little words He and
we retain here all their measureless signifi
cance. "As Jehovah liveth, and as thy soul
liveth : 7 In this remarkable Hebrew form
ula, the distinct personality and yet the insep
arable interdependence is made the ground
of appeal as the clearest and most immutable
fact on which to establish the immutability
of the oath. We may believe that " God is
all," that God is the world, or the soul of the
world ; we may or may not understand what
we mean by this ; but if along with it we
cleave, as for our very lives, to the truth that
this great One and All, as we may call him,
and scripturally call him, does truly think of
us as finite beings, that we are truly present
to that Eternal Mind, lying in it, embraced
by it, but still as personalities, the finite im
ages of the infinite personality, known as
such, cared for as such, held accountable as
such, treated, in fact, as spiritual persons and
7(5 THE DIVINE HUMAN
not as mere links in a physical system, or
endless chain of things if we cleave to this,
then all that we need for morality and re
ligion, or any religious hope, are preserved
to us in all their saving integrity. ; This
God is our God, and we are his people, the
flock of his pasture, and the sheep of his
hand. We may send our thoughts to any
extent in the one direction, if we never lose
that hold of prayer and conscience that binds
us to the other. We may indulge in any
views of the divine infinity, of the universal
life, of the one universal, all-embracing
thought, and yet feel that our almost infini
tesimal finity is as distinctly recognized as
though it had been alone with God, the only
act and object of his creating power. Such
is the language of faith transcending all cal
culations of quantity and extent. "Fear
not, only believe." There is no vastness in
which we can be lost. "Fear not, thou
worm Jacob, I have redeemed thee, saith the
Lord, I hold thee by thy hand, I have called
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 77
thee by thy name ; thou.art mine." " Why
sayest thou, Israel, my way is hid from the
Lord, and my judgment is passed over from
my God ? Hast thou not known ? Hast thou
not heard that the Everlasting God, the God
of eternity, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends
of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary ?
There is no searching of his understanding.
He giveth power to the faint, and to them
that have no might he increaseth strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
and the young men shall utterly fall ; but
they that wait upon the Lord shall renew
their strength ; they shall mount up with
wings as eagles ; they shall run and not be
weary, they shall walk and not faint."
There may be also a scientific theism which
is no better than pantheism, and may be even
less religious. It is less philosophical, too, and
steers clear of pantheism only at the expense
of reason and consistency. It shuts God out
of nature, out of the world, puts in His place
the idol law, all the while assigning to deity,
78 THE DIVINE HUMAN
with the utmost show of deference, some
extramundane, overlooking, sphere, whence
he never interferes with nature s everlasting
work. Such theism, \ve say, has even less of
a religious ground than the false pantheism.
The one so absorbs the world in God as to
destroy all idea of the divine personality ;
the other seems to preserve the distinction
and the personality, but renders it of no
account by severing it wholly from the natu
ral and the human, except as a mere name
for the remote unknown originating power.
Both are children of the same parent. Both
are vulgar though affecting great profundity.
Pantheism may be revived by modern schools,
as something wonderfully transcending or
dinary conceptions, but it is very early and
very common. It has existed, exists now,
where there is the least of culture and truly
educated thought. The Buddhist priests of
Thibet or Siam are far beyond, in this respect,
the philosophers of Boston or of Westminster.
The untaught plodder in the secluded me-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 79
chanic s shop has thought out all this philoso
phy for himself, and been surprised to find
that it was so well known before. So also
naturalism has flourished, and flourishes still,
with the crudest science. Lucretius and the
Epicureans could talk of law ctQ%ai, prin-
cipia, principles, they called it as profoundly
as any modern savan. The lecturers on
phrenology indulge in the same lingo with as
much confidence as the most scientific astron
omer or geologist. And they have the same
right to do so. Both classes of ideas, whether
they assume the pantheistic or the naturalistic
form, are products of the common thinking
as affected by the common depravity. Both
have something of reason in their paternity
but their common mother is an evil conscience.
They are born of the moral dislike, the moral
dread of the idea of a personal deity. They
are both but the unrest of souls that in their
flight from this personal God would find some
halting short of that lowest abyss of a dark,
idealess, wholly unintellectual atheism.
80 THE DIVINE HUMAN
On either view, this idea of the divine per
sonality is lost. That which cannot recognize
the finite, whether in itself, or out of itself,
or below itself, can have itself no self-hood ;
since it can have nothing of which it can
think (aside from the total idea) much less
any thing to which it can speak, or by which
it can properly be invoked. Personality im
plies relation, mutuality, plurality, or duality
at least. As predicated of deit}^ it involves
either the eternity of the world, as some of
the ancient minds held on this very ground,
or else eternal personal distinctions in the
divine being, the idea to which other ancient
minds resorted to solve the awful difficulty.
Deity could not be thought except as having
itself its eternal thought, its eternal love; and
hence that very old idea of the divine Pater
nity, with its Novq and 5Pv/^, which Pythag
oras and Plato are said to have brought from
the East. Or did it not rather come from
revelation, from the going forth in the world
of that early language we find in the very
IN THE SCKIPTURES. 81
beginning of Genesis, and which the neo-
logical interpretation can never satisfy, the
Word and the Spirit in creation, and that
mysterious allocution at the birth of hu
manity, " Let us make man in our image." It
is, however, enough for our present argument
to hold the thought in reference to created
personalities. Whatever we may think, or
fail to think of the divine pre-existence, still,
as regards any personal conceptions we can
form of deity, the ego is inseparable from the
tu and the ilk. In other words, there can be
no first person in him to whom there is no
second, and of whom, and by whom, there is
no third. When, in such a statement, we are
compelled to use the words in him, we have
already the language of personality, thereby
implying the inherent logical contradiction in
the contrary supposition, or its utter repug
nance to the God -given laws of human
thought. We cannot think at all, much less
speak, of God ; he cannot use the ego or
speak to us in any way, or tell us of himself.
82 THE DIVINE HUMAN
Any language implying such a self-hood
becomes as much anthropopathic as any as
criptions to deity of human affections, or
human bodily actions, or bodily organs.
Though not in the same degree, perhaps, yet
as truly and as essentially does it present the
finite, and even the human aspect. "Thou
art from everlasting unto everlasting" "He
dwelleth in light unapproachable and full of
glory" "/ am the first and the last, saith
the Lord, who is, and was, and is to come 7
"Before the day was, / am He" "And
now, Father, glorify thou me with the glory
that / had with thee before the world was."
These certainly are transcending revelations ;
if human speech can convey any thought of
God, it is here carried to its utmost height of
grandeur, as well as lucidity ; and yet all this
glorious language is liable to the same objec
tion of the man who denies the possibility of
a finite written or spoken revelation. It is
anthropopathic ; it implies personality, and
personal relations. It is the finite self-hood
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 83
invoking the Infinite ; it is one eternal per
sonality addressing another ; it is the In
finite speaking of himself, nvia -IE mn e S
sum qui sum, I am that I am, this sublimest
declaration of human speech falls in the same
category with what might seem the most
extravagant figures of the Hebrew prophets.
CHAPTER VI.
IF REVELATION is HUMAN, IT MUST BE MOST HUMAN The Scrip
tures "Written in the Heart of the Church In the History of
the World The Scriptures have a Typical Significance
Typical Men, Yiri Portendeiites Typical Facts The Formula
"Thus saith the Lord" Truly the Lord s Words Yet Psy
chologically the Prophet s Words In respect to Deity. One
Finite Mode is as outward as another Nature a General
Epistle Has no Intelligence for us, as Individuals, or a Race
Addressed to the Impersonal Scientific Reason The Scrip
tures a Special Epistle, having our name, and Address to Hu
manity The Media Specially Chosen Excellency of the Scrip
ture Language Should bo Used as much as Possible in
Devotion "Let us take with us Words and return unto the
Lord."
LET us sec clearly where we are. It is for
this purpose we have dwelt so long upon this
objection of anthropopathism. Carry it out,
and God could not make a revelation in lan
guage, in any language, in any actions,
signals, symbols, in any outward representa
tions, in any inward affections of the soul,
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 85
in any finite way, in short, that is either
actually or conceivably separated from the
one total action, the one indivisible and ever
lasting movement of the universe. If, how
ever, the Infinite can make a revelation to
the finite, and through the finite, then do
these minor difficulties all vanish. If God
can come down to us at all, then, with all
reverence be it said, can we see a reason why,
since all human language is radically under
laid, and must be underlaid, by images of
sense, he should adopt, at once, that style of
speech which is the most outward, the most
phenomenal, and, therefore, the most uni
versal. It is a typifying process. The
media are the souls, the emotions, the
thoughts, the imaginations of inspired men,
but so chosen, so placed in form, and so
worked, that the last outward impression
should present that deep, sharp, well-defined
letter, that may be clearly seen and read
of all men. Revelation is the chapter of the
supernatural, as given to us through inspired
86 THE DIVINE HUMAN
human agents. Along with this history of
the supernatural, and through it, as a
medium, it is also the vision of the divine
ideas as they appear in human forms ; and
thus has it been engraven, stereotyped, we
might say, indelible and imperishable, in the
whole history of the world, even as God
commanded the prophet " Write the vision,
and cut it deep on tablets, that he may run
who readeth it. 7
But the Bible is not mere ink and parch
ment. It has been written on the heart of
the Church, and thus has been, from age to
age, the living as well as the uttered word.
It has been deeply printed in the secular
annals of the world ; other histories being,
in this respect, but its marginal scholia. It
has carried with it, too, a typical significance,
a sense, not new, but ever enlarging, that
has made it, at every period, the law of the
world s cycles, the only light that gives any
meaning to its past, or can be trusted for
any interpretation of its future. The events
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 87
of Scripture are themselves words ha,ving a
significance to be interpreted. They are rep
resentative events. The men of Scripture
are representative men. They are nato ^,
as was said of Joshua the High Priest, " men
of type/ or typical men, viri portendentes,
avdqtc, tsQaToOKbTcbi, ovfifiokixoi . They
are homines in signum positi futurorum, as
Hieronymus following his Jewish teacher ad
mirably interprets Zach. 3:8. Thus regarded,
the Scriptural histories are, at the same time,
fact and figure. In respect both to men and
events, they are typical histories res futu-
ras res adumbr antes. They are the fore
cast shadows of other cycles in the life of
the world and the Church. Israel is the
"chosen servant" to be "light to the Gentiles,
and God s salvation, even to the ends of the
earth." And thus the whole revelation, Jew
ish and Christian, is a living word, uttered
continually in the great historical movement,
and so connected with it, that take away
this chapter of the supernatural and the
88 THE DIVINE HUMAN.
supernatural people, and the key to all his
tory is lost.
"Thus saith the Lord." They are truly
the Lord s words. It is the veritable language
of the Infinite speaking through media to the
finite mind, even as one unseen human soul
speaks to another human soul, through the
outward undulations of the air. And yet we
do not mar the thought of the infinite by
any such conception. All things, in their
imageless ideas, lie in that ineffable mind.
But when God puts them forth in the forms
of time and space, that is, actually thinks
them and utters them, then one mode is as
outward, that is, to Deity, as finite, as much
necessitated to some form of sense, or sense
conception, or sense imagery, as another.
Thus nature, too, as well as the Bible and
history, is a language, though having a gene
ral message. It is a species of telegraphic,
or far writing, conveying intelligence, but
not to the individual soul as such, nor for the
individual soul. It brings no intimation that
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 89
such soul is present to the divine thinking, or
has any special relation to the Infinite, or is
at all known to Him except as indivisibly
comprehended in the one total indivisible
thought. The signals of nature are addressed
to the impersonal scientific reason. Yet even
thus viewed as a general language it has its
difficulties of expression which no natural
theology can decypher ; it has archaisms, or
obsolete forms, of which we can give no
reason in any present order of things ; it has
apparent solecisms that we cannot reduce to
syntax by any exegetical strain we may put
upon them ; they look harshly, they sound
barbarously, in spite of all our attempts to
bring them into harmony with other moral,
or even physical utterances. Our a priori
philosophy would say they could not be
divine, that is, could not exist in the works
of a perfectly wise and good and powerful
being, if stubborn facts did not furnish the
constant refutation. Nature is a general
epistle, but the written revelation is purely
90 THE DIVINE HUMAN
human ; it is addressed to our race, and to
each individual soul that reads or hears it.
It has our name in the beginning and through
out. It is directed to humanity, and is,
therefore, most human in its form. It is
God s chosen language to us, the words and
images specially selected and specially ar
ranged with a reference to the wants of our
human race in their peculiar moral history.
The media employed are all determined with
respect to this. The age, the nation, the
man, the mind, are all chosen to bring it
out, and give it this utmost power of its rep
resentative fulness, " Thus saith the Lord,"-
it is not a mere prophetic formula, expres
sive of a general thought or feeling, and
leaving the filling up wholly to the human
imagination of the Seer. We are not to
believe this any more than the other or me
chanical theory, which would represent the
words as outwardly spoken to the Prophet s
ear, or telegraphically signalled to his imag
ing sensorium. They are, psychologically,
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 91
the Prophet s words, the Prophet s images,
yet still none the less specially designed
through the linked media of revelation, and
thus divinely enunciated, as the very best
possible words, the best possible imagery,
through which such an approximate com
munication of the ineffable could be made to
human minds. It is God s choice or chosen
language to us ; and it should be, therefore,
of all others, that which we should employ
when " we take with us words and return unto
the Lord. 77 As far as .possible, our prayers,
our praises, our confessions, our thanksgiv
ings, all our devotional intercourse with Deity
should be in the very language of Scripture,
in that sacred speech which He has pre
pared and given to us, even as he originally
taught to Adam the language of the common
life and common wants. So shall we most
worthily render " unto God the fruit of our
lips ;" so " shall the words of our mouth and
the meditations of our hearts be acceptable
unto him who is our strength and our Re-
92 THE DIVINE HUMAN.
deemer." The hypocrite may pervert this
Bible language, the fanatic may make it
odious, worldly satirists may caricature it,
clerical wits like Sidney Smith may ridicule
it as puritanical cant ; yet still to Christians
must it continue to be the sacred dialect,
God s chosen speech for his chosen people.
They will not profane it by thoughtless
use or secular parodies, yet still will they
cling to it as the cherished vernacular of
their new citizenship. In its wondrous
depth, its celestial clearness, its critical
edge,( 2 ) its " soul and spirit dividing energy/
its thought-piercing, heart-revealing power,
above all, in its awing impress of super
human authority whilst yet speaking in such
intensely human tones, they find it just the
medium their souls want, and God has pro
vided, for religious thinking as well as re
ligious utterance, the surest source, in short,
of right feeling, right conception, and right
speaking in all that relates to the spiritual
and the divine.
CHAPTER VII.
Is THE BIBLE LANGUAGE OBSOLETE ? " Christ apprehending
us " _ God Laying hold of us in his Word Accommodations
Apologies for the Bible Language Have We advanced beyond
it ? Holiness the true test of Progress in the Divine Ideas
A Progress in Revelation, but not for the Reason usually
gi ven _ The Bible Language nearest to the Ineffable The Phil
osophic style might have been employed The Materials for it
were very anciently in the World Paul could have talked Pla-
tonically The Old Testament Language produced a higher
order of thought than that of any Eastern or Western Philoso
phy Difference between the Jewish Outward and the Heathen
Outward Are the Modern Transcendentalists remarkably Holy
Men? Our Literary World Our Political Men Are they
really more spiritual than Cicero or Tacitus ? Universality of
the Scriptures.
GOD be thanked for the anthropopathism
of the Scriptures. It is but another name
for human sympathy. It is but another form
of that same love which moved Christ to
" take upon himself our nature," (if we adopt
the old Patristic rendering of Heb. 2:16) or
9-i THE DIVINE HUMAN
&lt;l to lay hold of us," to apprehend us, (accord
ing to the more modern exegesis,) when we
were sinking, like Peter, in the overwhelm
ing waters. He thus lays hold of us in his
word that we may think of him as he thinks
of us, that we may know him even as he
knows us, " that we may apprehend that in
which, or through which, we are apprehended
of Christ Jesus." ( 5 ) We may affect to be
above this condescension, to have grown out
of it in the advance of the world, to have
reached, in short, some spiritual eminence,
where, for ourselves at least, we may dispense
with it, and adopt a more philosophical style
of thought and speech. Hence so much of
what may be called apology for the Bible,
apologies strictly in the degenerate sense of
the word, excuses for the Bible, in fact, as
being adapted in its dress and diction to a
past age, though still possessing thought that
may be better recast or recoined in the
modern " Philosophies of Religion," or of
Christianity, as they are styled. But this
IN THE SCKIPTURES. 95
idea of obsoletism, though beginning to mani
fest itself in the more evangelical interpreta
tion, as it assumes to be, is as false as it is
irreverent. We would say also, as unphilo-
sophical, were it not too much in the style of
the very cant we are condemning. What is
there in the spiritual condition of man in this
nineteenth century of human darkness and
depravity ? What is there in any purer holi
ness, or any higher moral elevation we may
fancy ours, how much nearer, in this re
spect, do we stand to the ineffable truth, that
we should claim to be addressed in a different
style from that which was adapted to Patri
archs and Apostles, as though, through our
advance in other knowledge, we had really
reached a more spiritual or more holy state.
For this, and not mere intellectuality, must
be the true test. It is holiness, rather than
knowledge, that makes us like God. It is
love, humility, reverence, purity of heart
that brings an individual or an age nearer to
that which is most divine, most central, in the
96 THE DIVINE HUMAN
divine thought. Here is the real progress
through which we make a real approach unto
Deity ; this is the only progress that makes
us better able to understand God when he
speaks to us, whether it be in nature, in his
tory, or in the Word. " The pure in heart
shall see God." "Thou through thy com
mandments hast made us wiser than our ene
mies. I have more understanding than all
my teachers, for thy testimonies are my medi
tation. I understand more than the ancients
because I keep thy precepts."
Are we more holy, more loving, more un
selfish, more obedient, more believing, than
men of the olden time, then, and just in that
proportion of our higher holiness, and our
more loving obedience, and our purer self-
renouncing faith, may we hope that we are
wiser in the divine ideas. Now who shall
abide this test? Will it be the men who
have most to say in their writings, and in
their lectures, of the obsoleteness of the
Scriptures ? Are they the heavenly minded
IN THE SCRIPTUEES. 97
ones ? Or will it be their admiring followers
who regard them as the infallible oracles of
the age ? Will it be our literary classes
generally who talk so much of refinement
and culture ? Have they this higher spirit
uality, this purity of soul that renders men
Godlike and more capable of understanding
God ? To say nothing now of the vulgar or
" dogmatic piety " as they would style it, are
they really more distinguished than other
men, or the men of other ages, for their un-
earthliness, their contemplation of the higher
life, or that divine communion which even
reason would tell us, must be the truest
source of the truest divine knowledge ? Are
they, in all these respects, wiser, as they are
more holy, than " the ancients ?" Until con
vinced of this, we must continue to believe
that Moses, and David, and Isaiah, ^stood
nearer the divine thoughts than Strauss or
Hegel, that Paul and John were certainly as
capable, to say the least, of receiving spirit
ual ideas, and a true divine knowledge as any
5
98 THE DIVINE HUMAN
of the men who are now known as the tran
scendental thinkers and lecturers of the
times.
There is doubtless a progress in revelation ;
for the fact is announced in revelation itself.
"God, who in times past spake unto our
fathers by the Prophets, hath in these last
days spoken unto us by His Son." But the
reason of this must be sought elsewhere, if
sought at all, than in any spiritual progress of
man that may be supposed to keep in advance
of it, or to be independent of it, or to have pre
pared men for it. Higher truths were re
vealed through Paul than were given to
Joshua or to Samuel ; but no reason can be
assigned none derived from history or any
known condition of man why the earth-
wearied, heaven-seeking Patriarchs, why the
thoughtful Arabian of the days of Job, why
the Schools of the Prophets in the times of
the seraphic Isaiah, might not have received
into their souls the same spiritual truths that
were afterwards received by the dark, disso-
IN THE SCRIPTUKES. 99
jute, and brutalized inhabitants of Asia
Minor. No reason can be given why the
Duller revelation of God might not have been
understood by these earlier men, these lofty,
primitive minds, as well as it was afterwards
received and understood by the savage N"u-
midian, or the still fiercer Goth, or as it is
now received by the worldly, the sensual, the
ignorant, the unspiritual, of this nineteenth
century. JSTo reasons, we say, for this evi
dently designed progress in revelation, can be
derived from history simply, or from any
earlier or later culture of man as made known
in history. They must be sought in revela
tion itself, or foregone as among the inscru
table mysteries of the divine government.
It is enough for us that revelation has not
been dependent on human progress outside
of it, and, therefore, its language cannot be
rendered obsolete by it. The thought holds
true, even if we take into the account the
progress, or true spiritual culture, made
through revelation itself. Those who have
100 THE DIVINE HUMAN
shared most largely in this spiritual culture,
who have drank deepest at the fountain of
Scriptural truth, are the last to wish any
change, or to feel the need of any change in
the divine communications. They are thank
ful for every type, for every metaphor, for
every impassioned appeal, for every instance
of the divine condescension in coming down
to us, taking the scale of our thoughts, and
speaking to us in our own human emotions,
our own human conceptions, as well as in our
own human words. They know as well as
others, they know better than others, that
" God s thoughts are above our thoughts, 77
and his thinking above our thinking, "even
as the Heavens are high above the earth,"
but they also believe that in this Bible lan
guage there is the nearest earthly approxi
mation to the ineffable truth, that the eye
most intently fixed upon it though at a vast
distance, it may be is yet in the true direc
tion of the heavenly vision, and that the
heart that loves it most is most directly, and
IN THE SCRIPTUKES. 101
most speedily, growing up into the fulness
and reality of the heavenly life. Any sub
stitution of a more philosophical or scientific
dialect would be, thus far, a divergency from
the true celestial line, from the straight
course of the upward calling. It would fall
short in distance as much as the other, for
in this respect all human intellects must be
on a par whilst, in regard to the first and
far more essential idea, it would be a total
failure, even inasmuch as an error in direc
tion involves every other error. It would
be, moreover, essentially false in proportion
as it was destitute of that emotional power
which makes the Scriptures the Living Word,
the truth alive and vitalizing in the soul. If
we may venture to carry the thoughts on
ward to a period in eternity when the in
effable truth contained in Christianity shall
come directly before the spiritual vision, and
be " seen face to face," then may it be found
that they in this life were looking most
directly in this line of absolute verity who
102 THE DIVINE HUMAN
kept themselves most docilely and submis
sively to the gracious "accommodations" of
the Scriptures, not seeking to be above
them, or to dispense with them, on any view,
however outwardly respectful, of their being
wholly or partially designed for a former
more worldly or less spiritual age.
It is the Bible language in which the relig
ious emotion ordinarily finds its most fitting
vent. There are, it is true, ecstatic condi
tions, such as appeared in the miraculous
powers of the early Church, in which the
soul breaks out in an unknown tongue that
has no interpretation in any earthly thoughts
and images ; and yet we have intimations
that even in the higher world, the dialect of
the early religious life is not wholly lost.
John, indeed, saw the heavenly ideas through
earthly eyes; the mysterious "living crea
tures " around the throne, the golden city,
and the waters of life, may represent what
is ineffable to us in our present thinking, yet
still there are figures of the Sacred Writings,
IX THE SCRIPTURES. 103
if we may call them figures, that even eter
nity will never efface from the soul s long
rnemoiy. The Cross, the Crown, " the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, 77
these will be still the representatives of
imperishable ideas. They will remain, still a
language, in eternity as in time, still a lan
guage, even when science shall be seen to
have been only a reflection from a darkened
mirror, and philosophy a childish talking, a
childish thinking, long since put away among
far off earthly things.
The philosophical style of speech could
have been employed in the Scriptures, had
their divine author regarded it as the best
mode through which divine ideas could be
conveyed to men. It not only existed in the
world at a time when much of the older
Scripture was written, but had reached a
high degree of culture. The old Egyptian
Mystics, the Eastern Pantheists, the early
Ionian and Eleatic schools of the West,
Xenophanes and Heraclitus the ancient
lOi THE DIVINE HUMAN
Hegel and Spinoza, were talking of
and ama, of principles and causations, of the
" universal reason," the ovta and yiyvbyiwa,
the " being and the becoming," the objective
and the subjective, the me and the not me,
the One in all and the all in One, the ever
lasting flux and the eternal immobility, all
this not far from the time when Isaiah was
setting forth in his burning figures the in
effable majesty of the Living God, before
whom " the Seraphim veiled their faces with
their wings, crying Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of
Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory."
The language of the Schools had been
brought to its highest perfection (a perfec
tion we think not even now surpassed) when
Paul preached those stumbling-blocks to the
world s religion and the world s philosophry,
the doctrines of the Cross and of the Resur
rection. Is it said, then, that these were only
apparent teachings of the Apostle, that they
were defective forms of truth, mere accom
modations in fact, because he had no higher
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 105
language for the spiritual life and the divine
favor than these gross Jewish anthropop-
athisms, the only answer needed is a distinct
denial both of the fact and the argument.
Paul could have used the dialect of the
wranglers in the famous gymnasia of Tarsus,
he could have talked as spiritually as the
Platonists,or as logically as the Aristotelians,
or as mystically as the school of Philo, had
he seen fit to do so ; and in saying this, we
need not make for him, as has sometimes
been done, any extravagant claims in respect
to learning ; for the age was swarming with
these disputants, and their public discussions
and lectures, if not their books, were among
the common phenomena of the times. He
could easily have used their speech, and he
would have been understood too, as well as
philosophic language, so called, is understood
by the masses at the present day ; for all
through the chief towns of the Roman Em
pire, at least where the Greek language was
spoken, a smattering of this kind of talk had
5*
106 THE DIVINE HUMAN
got down into the common mind, even as it
has now filtered through the modern reading
and lecture hearing world. The scoffer
Lucian affords sufficient evidence, if we had
no other, that Paul, had he chosen to talk
philosophically, would have been as well un
derstood at Athens, or Corinth, as Mr.
Parker or any of his associates in Boston or
New York.
There is an egregious fallacy here, whether
we think of the later or the more ancient
revelation. A fact may be appealed to as a
conclusive refutation of all abstract reasoning
on the subject ; and this is, that the anthro-
popathism of the Old Testament, with its
typical representations, did actually produce
a higher order of thinking than the abstract
style of any Eastern or Western philosophy.
The ancient Jew, with his tabernacle made in
all respects "after the pattern shown to
Moses on the Mount/ 7 the cosmical ( 4 ) sanc
tuary or world temple typical of things in the
Heavens, 7 * with its lights and incense, the
* Heb. 9:11.
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 107
altar with its sacrifice, that sacrifice of which
the heathen world had lost the meaning and
for which its philosophy had no idea, the Ark
of the Covenant, the Mercy Seat, the Cheru
bim with their overshadowing wings looking
down upon its mystery, the Shekinah, the un
approachable Holy of Holies, the ancient
Jew, we say, through the ideas thus repre
sented, knew more of God, of his adorable
unity, his awful holiness, his intense hatred
of sin and impurity, than was ever dreamed
of in the " numerical ratios " of Pythagoras,
or the " eternal ideas 7; of Plato; he had a
more living thought of God s near person
ality, and, at the same time, his far-off incon
ceivable immensity, of his burning presence
as their own patrial Deity, and, at the same
time, his high unrepresentable glory tran
scending all similitude, * than ever came
from all the speculations of the Academy or
the Porch.
Some would compare these Jewish sym-
* Deut. 4 : 15.
108 THE DIVINE HUMAN
bols with the outward in the heathen
worship, but the difference is immense ; it
is radical, and exclusive of all comparison.
They were symbols of holiness, the others of
impurity ; they were symbols of the ineffable,
the others of all that was most sensual in
an outward arid sensual mythology ; they
were symbols of the heavenly, as transcend
ing nature, the others had almost wholly a
physical idea. The Jewish rites had a spirit
ual power, although maintaining a holy re
serve as to a spiritual world ; the other had
its fantastic supernatural, its wild demon-
ology, and yet the whole tendency was to the
earthly, the human, the lower than the
human ; for the prime consistency of these
chaotic myths, and of this chaotic worship,
was only found in making gods and dai-
mones, as well as men and animals, all the
children of one common mother nature.
Hence there was really so much less religion
among the heathen, even where they seemed
to be more religious than the Jews. The
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 109
former had no check upon their depraved
imaginations ; the chosen people had a stern
ritual out of which the fancy was forbidden
to wander. Hence, too, what has caused
some to wonder, that the Greeks should have
had what seemed a larger and more definite
creed respecting Hades, and souls in Hades,
than the Children of the Promise ; and yet,
to the thinking mind, how much more of
moral impressiveness in the few hints of the
Old Testament on this dread subject, its
cautious speaking, its awful reserve, we may
say, than in all the Greek fancies of Tartarus
and Elysium. The future life was not con
cealed ; there was a hope if not a distinct idea,
a faith, purer perhaps from its very indefi-
niteness, that in some way, the dead, the
righteous dead, at least, did still "live unto
God, r but the fulness and clearness of this
revelation was reserved for the Conqueror of
Hades. Such a doctrine was too precious to
be given fully to the world before "the In
terpreter " came, or to be prematurely sub-
110 THE DIVINE HUMAN
milled to Ihe peril of mythical additions and
deformities even among the chosen people.
It was, therefore, for ages to have the form
of pure trust in God, unaided, as it was un-
weakened, by any pictures of the fancy or
any necrological view that might take the
form either of poetry or philosophy. In the
descent to the Greek Hades there was no
such leaning on the divine arm, no such con
fidence as that in the strength of which the
Psalmist ventured down into the terra um-
brarum, or valley of the shadow of death ;
there was no faith like that which led the
religious Jew, in view not only of the un
known but unimagined futurity, to exclaim,
"Into thy hands do I commit my spirit;
Thou hast redeemed me, Lord God of truth."
For the Hebrew mind, the first great idea
was God, his sovereignty and holiness, what
ever might be the destiny of men ; and this
brings us back to the peculiar character of
the Old Testament rites and symbols as com
pared with all others then in the world.
IN THE SCRIPTURES. Ill
They were holy. They ever denoted the
pure, whether in the soul itself or in the
body, as typical of the spiritual cleanliness.
They denoted separation, election, or setting
apart for God. In a word, they were types
of holiness, and in this they were as far re
moved from all heathen worship on the one
hand, as from all heathen philosophizing on
the other.
How small the intervals both of time and
space, between the Hebrew prophets and
the Greek philosophers ! How preposterous,
then, the notion that God chose the language
of the former because the world had not yet
made sufficient spiritual progress to be ad
dressed in the more logical or intellectual
style of the latter ! How still more absurd
is it when we are told that this Jewish mind,
as represented by Paul, could not understand
the more spiritual Greek as set forth in the
school of Plato, or the high morality of the
Stoics. With such a taste, for we can give it
no higher name, it is impossible to dispute.
112 THE DIVINE HUMAN
If any cannot see, or rather feel, how im
measurably the ethical ideas of the Apostles,
to say nothing of the direct teachings of Christ,
transcend those of Epictetus and Seneca, then
all argument is thrown away ; the difference
is radical and irreconcilable.
The absurdity, however, is more evident,
it becomes even superlative, when it is as
sumed that the modern mind, the common
modern mind, we mean, as it appears in the
ordinary literary and political life, so far
transcends in ethical purity both the Greek
and Jewish ideas of the holy and the divine,
that we need a new theological language, or
that the old Scriptural style, though yet re
spected as the vehicle of ancient thought now
obsolete, should be henceforth regarded as
the " accommodating " teacher of those ad
vanced conceptions of God and his eternal
kingdom that have come from our modern
aesthetics and our modern knowledge. In
this view, so condescending whilst so conserv
ative, the Bible is still to be retained like
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 113
some rough though high-priced picture of
the " old masters ;" its antique setting even
is to be undisturbed, and its strange color
ing left untouched through regard for its
venerable antiquity ; but then it is to be as
sociated with ideas of a higher order, and
with such a " philosophy of religion " as prob
ably the old writers would have taught had
they shared in the present spiritual advance.
Now, to do justice to this modern claim, it
must be treated according to the assumption
it necessarily involves if it be a real progress,
that is, a real spiritual progress. To be con
sistent with that undeniable test that has just
been laid down, its chief ground of confidence
can be rationally nothing else than some as
tonishing increase in holiness, unearthliness,
and heavenly-mindedness, supposed to have
been lately made in certain schools in Ger
many, and among those who speak of them
selves as the leading thinkers of our own
land. So clear as well as profound have been
their discoveries of God and eternal things
114 THE DIVINE HUMAN
that an entirely new aspect has been given to
theology. It is also to be maintained on the
ground of a similar general advance in holi
ness, brought about through the influence of
these "leading minds." Society in its com
mon thinking is so much nearer heaven,
nearer the empyrean of truth, the literary
world is so much more pure, the " educated
classes/ as they are called, are becoming so
much less earthly, so much more occupied
with divine contemplations, that we have a
right to expect a higher style of revelation
than was vouchsafed to former times. Some
of the language we have just employed may
seem strange as thus applied. This talk of
superior holiness may strike even the sup
posed claimants as being somehow out of
place, or as suggesting, in their case, inhar
monious ideas. But surely this arrogant as
sumption of a spiritual advance carrying men
beyond the spirituality of the Bible, means
just this, means all this, or it means nothing.
Judged, then, by this standard, tried by
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 115
this test, what, we may ask in all serious
ness, is our political world, our literary world,
our " thinking class," our men of culture, that
they should make this claim, or be supposed
to occupy so much higher a position in re
spect to the unearthly things, or those great
matters of eternity that have agitated the
minds of men from the foundation of the
world or the day when humanity first began
to think or feel. What is there in the mod
ern public man that places him, in this re
spect, above the public man of former times ?
To go no farther back into the remote past,
wherein has he any advantage, except what
the Bible gives him, if it gives him any, over
the Roman senator ? We say, if it gives him
any, for unless it has had a direct converting,
sanctifying, enlightening influence upon his
soul, we may even regard the heathen as the
nobler man. Christianity, if it has not raised,
has lowered the other. The mere nominal
profession, with its habitual and demeaning
hollowness, has taken from the native man-
116 THE DIVINE HUMAN
hood which appears so splendid in some of
the historical examples of the olden time,
whilst it has conferred no compensating heav
enly grace. But select the highest modern
specimens of this class. Wherein, we may
well ask, does such a one show more spiritu
ality than Cicero, a better hope than Agricola,
a higher sense of the world s great evil than
Tacitus? In short, take away the direct
effects of regenerating grace on individual
souls for these are yet, as in the early cen
turies, the rare exceptions and where is the
great spiritual difference between our nomi
nally Christian and the ancient heathen
State?
It is, indeed, a most preposterous claim
that is thus put forth on behalf of our social
and literary condition, especially as it is
sometimes partially sanctioned in our modern
preaching. We are not more unworldly than
the Patriarchs, more spiritual than the Proph
ets, more heavenly-minded than the Apostles ;
we are not nearer the great celestial verities
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 117
than men of the olden time, at least by any
philosophy, or science, or culture of our own
that is independent of the study and the
grace of the Scriptures ; we are not beyond
the Bible either in its letter or its thought.
There are ideas there the world has not yet
fathomed ; there are words and figures there
whose rich significance interpretation has not
yet exhausted. The Scriptural style and the
Scriptural language are not meant for one
age, but for all ages. Its orientalisms will
grow in the west ; its archaisms will be found
still young in the nineteenth century. Sci
ence is ever changing as it is ever unfinished,
its language is ever becoming obsolete as it
is ever superseded, philosophy is continually
presenting some new phase of its ever-revolv
ing cycles, the political world is ever a dis
solving view, literature becomes effete and
art decays, "but the Word of our God shall
stand forever." Not so sure are the types of
nature as even the form and feature of this
written word, if it be indeed the word of God,
118 THE DIVINE HUMAN.
uttered in humanity, breathed into human
souls, informing human emotions, conceived
in human thoughts, made outward in human
images, and indissolubly bound, as the won
drous narrative of the supernatural, in the
long chain of human history.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ENDURING "WORD Christ s Declaration. Matt. v. 18 "Not
one Iota shall fail" The Reference is to the Spiritual Effect
Every Part of the Scriptures contributes to the Great Consum
mation The True Textus Receptus Written in the Heart of
the Church Militant and Triumphant The Living Word, the Liv
ing People The Everlasting Codex The " Fight of Faith"
The Bible Question ever calling out a New Power The Problem
it presents in History No Human Intellect Competent to Solve
it Except on the Ground of the Supernatural Other Sacred
Books belong to but One Age Are addressed to but One Phase
of Humanity Strange Universality of the Bible The Rationalist
has no Eyes for the great Wonder of the Book.
"THINK not that I am come to destroy the
law and the prophets ; I have not come to
destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto
you, until heaven and earth pass away, one
iota or one point of the law shall never pass
away until all shall be fulfilled." These re
markable words have been variously inter
preted. They have been referred to the
120 THE DIVINE HUMAN
concise summing of the Jewish code, as given
by Christ in the two great commandments of
love. They have been regarded as denoting
the law of nature, as it is called, or the
general principles of ethics, as recognized by
the conscience. Their interpretation has
been found in the ceremonial ordinances as
typical, or in the law of sacrifice as fulfilled
in its substance by the great sacrifice on the
cross. But there is a minuteness, and, at
the same time, a universality in this language,
that would seem to demand a corresponding
exegesis. The law, as thus used by our
Saviour, and as it was employed by devout
souls in the Old Testament, would seem to
be another name for God s written revela
tion the canon, or "rule he hath given to
direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him."
Thus received, it would include, even in the
present passage, not only the Old Testament
Scriptures, but also the words of Christ him
self, and all that is revealed by his commis
sioned messengers as the full complement
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 121
and development of these older scriptures.
God s whole written revelation in the world,
from the beginning to the end, the whole
canon of Scripture, all that is recognized by
Christ as ayiai yqayai or Holy Writings,
"not one iota or one point shall fail." The
special words constitute a proverbial expres
sion of universality to denote the completeness
of effect. It cannot intend the perfect pres
ervation of the written integrity. There
were defective readings and defective trans
lations in Christ s own time ; although it is
indeed wonderful how, beyond all other works
in the world, these writings have been pre
served without the loss of an idea, and, we
may venture to say, without the change of a
figure, notwithstanding all the variations of
words and orthography that the keenest criti
cism has ever collected.
But we may suppose this language of uni
versality to have a wider, and, at the same
time, a deeper meaning than either of these
views would assign to it. It transcends the
6
122 THE DIVINE HUMAN
rationalistic interpretation, even as it takes
in more than any cabalistic veneration of
syllables and letters. It embraces the written
word in its substantial correctness as ever
capable of being brought out by fair com
parison, whilst it has its truer significance, its
more interior significance, in the living word
as it has been copied in the soul, and printed
through ages on the hearts of the Holy
People. This is the textus receptus that has
been carried down on something more dura
ble than parchment. This is the spiritual
Mishna, as the Jews called the higher exem
plar, or second edition of the law. Every
part has been thus impressed on souls here or
in eternity. A spiritual stereoscope, could
we imagine such an instrument, might thus
reveal its clear perspective, even though
deeply hidden from the common outward
view. It is in the memories of the Church
militant and triumphant. If lost every
where else, in every outward form of writ
ing, here is the true spiritual codex, and from
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 123
this might it be restored, even as it has been
said, though it may be hyperbolically, that if
all the Bible had been lost as it existed in
manuscripts, it might still have been recover
ed from the Commentaries and devotional
writings of the Christian Fathers. It is the
effect of this written word, we think the
Savious means, the effect of this whole
revelation, old and new, first on the Church,
and secondly, on the mind and life of the
race. Not one jot or tittle shall fail from
the law till all be fulfilled. No part shall
be without its contribution to this great end.
Its history, its poetry, its precept, its proph
ecy, its genealogies even, will be found to
be all necessary parts, not merely of the in
ception, but of the continuance and the con
summation of the work, all necessary parts
of this standing exhibition of God, or the
supernatural, in human redemption. And so
shall the Bible remain " unto the last syllable
of recorded time," the great spiritual power
of the world. It shall live until all history
12i THE DIVINE HUMAN
shall be seen to be but its fulfilment, and all
the divine dealings with our race, from the
beginning to the close of its career, to have
had constant reference to its "Great Salva
tion." Nay, beyond this, even in eternity
shall it survive. Such would seem to be a
fair interpretation of the language on which
we are dwelling. "Heaven and earth shall
pass away, but not one point of the law shall
fail." In this its spiritual power, and in this
its ineffaceable spiritual impression, shall it
be among "the things that remain," even
after God has arisen to " shake, not the earth
only, but also the heavens." The present
order of nature shall cease, the secular his
tory shall be closed, even the spiritual and
ecclesiastical shall be changed, " but the word
of our God shall stand forever." Similar to
this is the passage Matt. xxiv. 35, Luke xxi.
33 " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but
my words shall not pass away." The decla
rations are clearly parallel in their wider
significance. The law, in the one case, as
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 125
the known term for all Scripture, and the
words of Christ as setting forth its perfect
fulfilment, are but different names for one
and the same everlasting, unchanging reve
lation.
A man may find difficulties in the Bible ;
but surely no intelligent mind can view it
without wonder. There is certainly one re
markable change in the aspect of the Biblical
question which has been produced by the
learned study of late years. Infidelity is as
rife as ever ; the opposition both of the com
mon worldly, and of the philosophical worldly
mind, is as strong as ever ; but the age of
scoffing has gone by. There can be no more
Paines and Yoltaires. The days of easy un
belief, as well as of easy belief, have passed
away. It is becoming a more serious ques
tion, a more earnest controversy for both
parties. " The fight of faith" is waxing
stronger and closer ; it is every day present
ing, on each side, new and bolder issues.
There is, too, this new feature, that each is
126 THE DIVINE HUMAN
taking the attitude of assailant. Christianity
no longer stands simply on its defence.
The war is driven into the enemy s camp,
yea, into the very citadel of unbelief. It is
shown that the rejection of the Bible is the
rejection of all belief beyond the most earthly
and sensual. The field of the lists is being
narrowed down to the questions Revelation,
or Atheism Revelation, or the giving up of
all hope in a life beyond the grave. The
middle ground is being rapidly cleared away,
and all who think at all are looking breath
lessly for the result of this more than Titanic
conflict, when faith shall rise higher than
ever, and revelation be more strongly believ
ed than ever, or "Chaos come again" not
only in all religious credence, but over that
whole firmament of ideas so closely connected
with it. The mighty reasoner, Time, is fast
bringing to this conclusion the world s best
thought. Poetry, Philosophy, Art, all that
is spiritual in eloquence, all that is inspiring
in nature, all that is stimulating and elevat-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 127
ing, even in science, are inseparable eventually
from religion, even as religion is inseparable
from revelation. They might maintain a
lingering twilight existence after its sun had
forever set, but must, inevitably, sooner or
later, go out in the same overwhelming dark
ness. In earlier periods of the earth s his
tory they might, perhaps, have longer sur
vived such a "disastrous eclipse," but now,
as every reason teaches us to believe, the
obscuration would be all the more rapid in
proportion to the exhaustion of the conflict,
and the depth of the despair.
It is thus that God is putting this question
in a way to try the world as it has never
been tried before. He who cannot see this
is blind to one of the most portentous signs
of the times. Even among the most ration
alistic and the most sceptical, it is coming to
be both felt and acknowledged, that this phe
nomenon of the Bible and its wondrous hold
upon mankind presents a problem requiring
for its solution an amount of learning, and a
128 THE DIVINE HUMAN"
depth of thought, demanded by no other in
the history or psychology of our race. What
a place that book has occupied in our world !
What a blank would have been left, what a
blank would now be left, without it ! Even
the difficulties of belief increase the difficul
ties of rejecting it. How it lives on in spite
of the most startling objections, not now for
the first time met, but as clearly seen and as
strongly put nearly two thousand years ago
as in the present century. It has not only
maintained itself, but false philosophies and
pretended revelations have obtained a stronger
hold in the world, simply by counterfeiting
its outward semblance. Thus has it made its
way, carrying its own burdens, and the much
heavier weights that human depravity has
put upon it. Tested by the chances of any
mere human conflict, of any philosophic or
literary strife, it would ages ago have van
ished from the field and been consigned to
oblivion ; but here it is yet, the mightiest
element in human thought, and challenging
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 129
to the conflict the mightiest of human antag
onisms. How it rises up, ever higher and
stronger, against every fresh assault ! every
new phase of unbelief, when it is really new.
only calling out some before unknown aspect
of power in this exhaustless defence. But it
is not enough to say that the Bible has kept
its ground in the world it has ever been ex
tending itself, not only into new territory,
but into new fields of thought. Philosophy
assumes to be independent of it, but finds, in
the end, that it must go the way of all hu
man speculations, or fortify itself by ideas
that can never more belong to human think
ing should this book be discarded from the
world. So science, too, often "seems first
in its own cause, until revelation cometh and
searcheth it." Some startling discovery has
raised the hopes of unbelief, but soon this
more ancient power in the world, this power
of the unseen and the eternal, rides over the
sense difficulty, or shows it to belong to a
lower plane of knowledge with which the
130 THE DIVINE HUMAN
diviner truth can have no actual or imagined
collision.
It is easy to make objections to the Scrip
tures, objections, it may be admitted, ex
tremely difficult of solution, some of them,
perhaps, baffling every attempt at solution ;
but to explain the strange phenomenon, and
the strange history connected with it, this is
the great and crowning difficulty that puts
all others out of sight. It is comparatively
easy to descend into the Avernian pit of infi
del cavil, but to ascend therefrom to any clear
hypothesis of human destiny after revelation
has been once rejected, or to show how cer
tain ideas could ever have been in the world
without it, hoc opus hie labor est ; this is the
adventure for which our modern world finds
no Hercules ; this is the undertaking of which
infidelity has not carefully counted the cost,
although there are signs of the corning con
flict which clearly show that her confident
advocates will be compelled to do so. No
human intellect we boldly venture the as
IX THE SCKIPTURES. 131
sertion no human intellect, and no amount
of human learning yet gathered, are compe
tent to the task of accounting, on any known
natural principles, for the strange existence
in our world of a series of writings, and cor
responding influences, so unearthly in their
power yet so human in their form, so deep
in the world s thought yet so constantly in
conflict with all contemporary thinking, and,
therefore, at each period of its existence so
utterly opposed to any idea of development,
teaching the absolute unity of God through
all the black night of the Western polythe
ism, the vivid personality of God in the
denser darkness of the Eastern pantheism,
the holiness of God amid every where sur
rounding forms of worship so impure that
they cannot be described, the unrepresent
able essence of God when the world was full
of a monstrous idolatry or a foul Egyptian
symbolism, proclaiming salvation by the
Cross when the schools were priding them
selves on the perfection of their ethical phi-
132 THE DIVINE HUMAN
losophy, announcing the resurrection of the
body when the select thinkers were soaring
in their Platonic spiritualism, and a new and
heavenly life for the soul when the vulgar
herd of Epicurus were filling the air with
the swinish noise of their sensualism, tri
umphing alike over the Senecas and the
Neros, the Antonines and the Domitians,
overthrowing the giant power of ancient Pa
ganism, driving it from that last strong-hold
of conservatism it had sought in the philo
sophic revival of the early myths, shedding
a holy light during the long period of Bajba-
riari and Mediae val darkness, breaking forth
with new splendor at the Reformation, and
yet filling men s minds with fear, or sustain
ing them in heavenly hope, in the face of a
war that never raged so fiercely as in these
days when naturalism and criticism com
bined, as they were never combined before,
are doing their utmost to shake the author
ity of its divine mission.
Every other assumed revelation has been
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 133
addressed to but one phase of humanity.
They have been adapted to one age, to one
people, or one peculiar style of human
thought. Their books have never assumed
a cosmical character, or been capable of any
catholic expansion. They could never be
"accommodated" to other ages, or accli
mated to other parts of the world. They
are indigenous plants, that can never grow
out of the zone that gave them birth. Zoro
aster never made a disciple beyond Persia or
its immediate neighborhood Confucius is
wholly Chinese as Socrates is wholly Greek.
But Zoroaster and Confucius, it may be said,
were unknown to the world at large, and
therefore never had a fair trial. This is true.
Their names, indeed, are often in the mouths
of the superficial adversaries of the Christian
faith, but even now the most learned can
hardly claim familiarity with their writings.
The question, however, still returns : why
have they remained so separate, so powerless
out of their own early period, and their own
13-i THE DIVINE HUMAN
peculiar nationality, unless it be because of
their utter want of any world-life or world-
ideas, capable of stirring any universal emo
tion, or producing any universal effect? Why
are the remains of these shut up in the libra
ries of the Archaeologist, whilst other Ori
ental books more ancient still have become
household words, and been multiplied in mil
lions and billions of copies through every part
of the civilized world ? It is a question cer
tainly demanding the most serious study of
all who would be thought to take a profound
view of human affairs. Writings from the
far East, from the earliest East, records al
most coeval with the flood, yea, some of
them not irrationally supposed to have cross
ed its world-dividing waters, still taught in
the nursery, still read in our primary schools,
still taxing all the research of the most learn
ed, still furnishing the fountain source of all
that can worthily be called devotion or spir
ituality in the earth, giving the child his
first ideas of God s creating power, and cheer
ing the aged and the dying with the only
IN THE SCRIPTUKES. 135
hope that can sustain the soul in its dread of
the primaeval penalty, the hope that is
found in the early, the oft-repeated promise
of a conquering Saviour, and the final tri
umph of redeeming love ! What is there
that blinds our rational interpreters, so called,
to these wonderful aspects of the Bible prob
lem ? They are sharp enough to discover
everything else but that which so deeply
impresses the religious mind, and, without
which, the book, though still curious as an
antiquarian document, is hardly worth the
learned pains they are so laboriously bestow
ing upon it. Some of them are so keen-
sighted that from a few chapters in Genesis,
and a few slight differences in Hebrew words,
they can give us the chronology of the Welt-
alter ; they can detect the cause of the mis
take that assigns Lamech to the last period of
the Cainitic instead of his true position in the
commencement of the Sethic cycle.* From
* See the Ninth No. of the Jahrbiieher der Biblischen
Wissenschaft von Heinrich Evvald, 1857, 1858.
136 THE DIVINE HUMAN
these data although so hidden in the letter,
their learned and fertile imaginations deter
mine satisfactorily the true relations of the
Sethic to the Shemitic Welt-alter ; they know
all about the Jahvethum, and the Antedilu
vian religious sects of the Jahveists and the
Elohists ; they can go back of the writer, or
writers, and tell us what were the ethnolog
ical conceptions which these early " sages"
meant to represent in their fragmentary and
badly-connected myths ; yea, from their own
higher " stand point" they can even concede
to them a kind of inspiration, but it is the
inspiration of great "historic ideas," which
in those primitive times could embody them
selves in no other forms but those of a myth
ical genealogizing. All this they can sec
very plainly : those primitive sages, the)
have discovered, were pure idealists ; the}
were even then thinking out, and expressing,
in their mythical way, a Philosophy of His
tory. But the great idea, that which was
truly expressed, and has ever since, more or
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 137
less, affected the world s religious thinking,
for this our rational critics have no eyes.
They see nothing wonderful in that earliest
prediction of the earliest Welt-alter, that the
" Seed of the woman shall bruise the ser
pent s head, 77 that one who is divine from
his very work, and yet the Son of Man, shall
vanquish the power of evil and redeem his
suffering brethren from its long and cruel
dominion. Wise are they, even above all
that is written, in regard to this first twilight
of the world s chronology, whilst they fail to
understand how this book of Genesis, scanty
as are its records, thus furnishes the key to
all following history, and discover nothing
worthy of their profoundest thought in the
fact, that these "myths "of the early and
distant East are still exercising such a power
over regions, and ages, and manners, and
institutions, so different in outward form, so
far removed, in space and time, from those
to whom they were first given.
C H A P T E 11 IX.
THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE SCRIPTURES The Bible Compared with
other Books --The Paradox The most National and at the same
time the most Cosmical of Writings Its World- Life Its Early
Seclusion The "Going Forth of the Law from Zion " Sudden
and Powerful Effect upon the Greek and Roman World Hindoo
and Persian Scriptures, no Life out of India and Persia The
Koran Next to the Bible in Catholicity This comes from its
Shemitic Character Reasons in the Bible itself for its tenacious
Life No Book so Translatable Other " Sacred Books" shock
usbythe Monstrosity of their Human -Their Inhuman-;/^ The
Grotesque and Want of Dignity in their Supernatural In the
Scriptures the Marvellous is the Presumptive The Supernatural
becomes Easy of Belief.
THE other writings to which the Jewish
Scriptures have been compared never did
exert, and never could have exerted such an
influence. No historical events could ever
have given it to them. It was not from the
want of opportunity that their hidden life
had been denied its true manifestation. The
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 139
books of the Bible were originally as seclud
ed as tbese, yea. more secluded, we may say,
more strictly national ; but this only makes still
more marvellous the mystery of that mighty
dominion they exercised, when in God s
good time the seals were loosed, and these
strange Eastern writings, so unphilosophical,
so unlike anything that ever came from the
schools, were disclosed to the Western world.
For ages had they been shut up in the
mountains of Judea, w iivi fiaqfiactr/.w TOTTOJ
no()()a) TCOV OVTI tvfe riuetbQas fc : 7r6Tf t wg, if we
may accommodate that remarkable language
of Plato ::: in which he seems to indulge in
something more than a conjecture, that in
some distant region, and coming from some
distant past, ? v vivi ansiqy TO) naqtl.ri\v&b r ti
XQovc), there might be a wisdom unknown to
the Greek and yet to be revealed to the
world. (5) There for ages had they remained,
* See the whole of this remarkable passage. Plato
Rep. vii. : 498, c. In some barbarian region far away.
In some part of the immense tim, that is past.
140 THE DIVINE HUMAN
a " garden enclosed, a fountain sealed," until
" the everlasting doors were lifted up," and
the commandment came that " the Law should
go forth from Zion, and the Word of the
Lord from Jerusalem." How sudden, how
irresistible the effect ! How few the genera
tions before this Chronicle of Redemption,
this old Epic of " the Chosen People" and
their Hero Messiah, together with those
later yet still Jewish writings that contained
the world-interpretation of the more ancient
national covenant, filled and vivified all the
literature, all the philosophy, yea, all the
thinking of the vast Roman empire ! How
soon it modified, yea, completely transform
ed, that whole historical state out of which
arose our modern Europe and our modern
civilization ! What divine energy was this,
that so far surpassed all former powers that
had arisen out of the Occidental mind, and
might, therefore, be supposed so much better
adapted to it? Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Socra
tes, Academics, Stoics, Rhetoricians, Moral-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 141
ists they had never so stirred the world,
they had touched no universal chords in hu
man souls, although nothing could seemingly
be more abstract, and, therefore, more uni
versal, than the language of their precepts.
Their speculations, though in appearance so
general and so profound, did not, after all,
reach down to that which underlies all human
nature, as human nature, in its constitution
and its wants. They had no Fall to tell of,
no Redemption. The former might have
been dimly shadowed in some of their poetic
myths, but the latter had no place in their
philosophy. The world was caring little
about them or their systems ; it was fast
sinking into darkness, with all the light they
gave ; it was becoming more corrupt, more
worthless, with all they said about the excel
lency of virtue and the dignity of reason ;
more deformed and false, with all their talk
about the " true, the beautiful, and the good."
But when Christ and Moses came, when the
prophets came, and He of whom they wrote,
142 THE DIVINE HUMAN
when Evangelists and Apostles came, how
mighty the change, and how soon did it
manifest itself in so great a revolution of hu
man ideas ! Will some of the men who talk so
much of development, explain this mystery
that has withstood all the " sneers of Gibbon,
and stands yet the inexplicable fact of the
world. 7 Development is the magic word ;
but development from what ? From what
seed grew this sudden and mighty tree ?
From what seed in the Greek mind in the
Roman mind, in the Jewish mind simply as
historically exhibited in the days of Christ,
and without reference to any new divine
power, or to the spirit of their ancient Scrip
tures? There is development, surely, a
divine development, involving, however, an
effect, and necessitating a cause, than which
there could be nothing more opposed to all
the ideas the rationalist must assume as the
elements of his hypothesis.
And so, too, the Hindoo scriptures, of
which our transcendentalists talk so much and
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 143
so ignoraiitly, have no meaning, no life out
of India. In the West, they have been, and
ever will be, but matters of learned curiosity ;
and even this interest they fast lose the more
intimately we become acquainted with them.
It would be impossible, by any " accommoda
tions/ by any associations, to make out of
them a book adapted for any Occidental in
fluence, either moral, religious, or philosophi
cal. It is fast becoming more and more evi
dent that their only theological dogmas of
any religious power, or even philosophical
interest, are but the almost defaced remains
of ideas belonging to the old patriarchal rev
elation of the World-Deliverer, and which
are brought out in all their sublimity in the
Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. In all
other respects, in their monstrous mythology,
in their mind-destroying pantheism, above all,
in their revolting impurity, they are what
the depraved Hindoo mind has made them,
and what they, in their reaction, have made
the present Hindoo race. The same local,
144 THE DIVINE HUMAN
partial nature may be affirmed, though less
strongly, of the Koran. It is a far more
catholic book, however, that is, has more of
a world-life, than the Hindoo scriptures ;
but this comes solely from its Shemitic de
scent, and from its being such a reflex of the
old Shemitic revelation. It would not be far
out of the way to regard the Koran as one
of the apocryphal books of the Bible. It is
from its oft-asserted claim to be the religion
of Abraham, " in whom all the families of
the earth were to be blessed/ 7 that this sub
lime poem of Mohammed (for with all its
falsehoods it is in truth a sublime production)
has its real power, its wide-spread, long-
enduring hold in so many parts of the older
continents. (6) Still, to a great extent, may
the same character be applied to all the
religious books of the world, except that one
which proves its humanity, and so, its true
divinity, or the divine in the human, by its
universality. Of all the others it may be
said that they are local, partial, periodical.
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 145
Each has its peculiar phase, chronological
and ethnological, out of which it cannot be
transplanted. The Bible alone makes disci
ples of every race. It would be hard to
decide where it had more strongly displayed
its subduing power, on the Asiatic, the Af
rican, or the European mind. Descending
with the ages, and through every phase of
humanity, it has met them all, it has warred
with all, and its uniform triumph warrants the
induction, even aside from faith, that it will
surely survive them all. Of such a history
it is but sober eulogy if we employ the lan
guage of that strange believer, Sir Thomas
Browne, " Men s works have an age like
themselves, and though they outlive their
authors, yet have they a stint and a period
to their duration. This only is a work too
hard for the teeth of time, and cannot perish
but in the final flames when all things shall
confess their ashes."
There is a divine guardianship of the Bible ;
so we must hold as consistent believers;
7
1-46 THE DIVINE HUMAN
but aside from this, there is in the book it
self a reason for its tenacious life. The
secret of its lasting hold upon the human
mind may be found in this striking union of
the closest specialty with the widest univer
sality. Here we have what may be called the
paradox of the Scriptures. Addressed pri
marily to the most separate as well as the
most peculiar people on the face of the earth,
(and one that still maintains its separateness
and its peculiarity, as a standing witness to
this remarkable divine economy,) these writ
ings have nevertheless such a wonderful
adaptation to all people, to all ages, to all
individual men ! There must be something
in them that goes far below all outward
form, all outward dress of age or nationality,
something that penetrates the deepest de
partment, the most interior chamber, or
sanctum sanctorum of the universal soul.
They "try the reins;" "they reveal unto
man his thought;" "they teach wisdom in
that hidden part 7 where each individual
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 147
spirit finds its connection, its identity, we
might almost say, with the universal human
ity. Hence so concrete, and yet so abstract.
It is not, however, through logical language,
so called, but by the very intensity of their
sense imagery, that they pierce through the
sense, as it were, " reaching even to the
division of soul and spirit, 7 the dividing line
of yv%r\ and nvevjua, and thus becoming " dis-
cerners of those thoughts and intents of the
heart" that lie below the ordinary conscious
ness, but which, when discovered, are recog
nized to be the most intensely individual, as
they are the most profoundly generic, in the
human constitution.
Hence it is that no book is so translatable
as the Bible. It runs with the least difficulty
into all languages, East or West. When it
fails to meet wi h idioms that are perfect
equivalents, it w 11 always be found that its
own may be successfully transplanted, and
that they will grow with surprising freshness
and vigor in the new soil. Hence no so
148 THE DIVINE HUMAN
ready a way to enrich a language, even an
old and copious language, as to translate the
Bible into it. We are not generally aware
how many of our own most life-like idioms
are in fact orientalisms thus introduced into
our remote Western world. The reason of
this may be sought in the seeming paradox
before alluded to. It is the "Living Word,"*
6 hbyoq toi) Otov cai&gt; Y.OI eve^y^g, "the Word
of God, quick and powerful, 7 yet clothed in
humanity ; and hence it is so intensely human
because it is the divine in the human. In
other words, it could not have been so hu
man had it not also been divine. Only a
power high above us could have so looked
down into the very depths of our nature.
Other or pretended revelations prove their
falsehood by their monstrosity, by their in-
humanness, if we may use such a word, their
distorted apprehensions of man, as well as
their absurd notions in respect to God. In
their ambitious attempts to rise above the
human, they get lost in a dreamy pantheism,
* HeK 4 : 12.
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 149
or a grotesque mythology, both of which,
while they fall in with a partial order of
thought, or a peculiar style of imagination,
are alien to the early and natural, to the most
uniform and universal, thinking of the race.
In the Bible, on the other hand, even the su
pernatural we may say it without a paradox
is most natural. It is in such true keeping
with the times, with the events and doctrines
it attests, with all the surrounding historical
circumstances as they are narrated, that we
almost lose the feeling of the supernatural
in the admirable harmony and consistency of
the ideas and scenes presented. It seems to
be just what might have been expected ; it
would be strange that it should be otherwise ;
the marvellous here is the presumptive, the
extraordinary becomes the easy of belief.
The supernatural assumes the familiar ap
pearance of the natural, and God s coming
down to us, and speaking to us, seem less
incredible than that far-off silence which,
though so unbroken for our sense, is so per
plexing and unaccountable to our reason.
CHAPTER X.
THE BIBLE SUPERNATURAL Illustrations The Supernatural at
Sinai The Burning Bush Moses at the Red Sea Compare
these with the Hindoo, Greek and Scandinavian Myths The
Moral Grandeur Elijah the Tishbite The very Natural rising
into the Supernatural The Supernatural in the Life of Christ
Its constant Indwelling Presence More Impressive than any
outward Miraculous Manifestation "Thou art the Christ the
Son of the Living God " Commands to conceal the Supernatu
ral Power The Transfiguration Christ Walking on the Sea
Was it meant for a Display? Or was it the true Outgoing of an
Ecstatic Spiritual Condition? Mark 6:48, "He would have
passed them by" It followed a Night of Prayer Was this an
Isolated Case ? The Scriptures give us but Glimpses even of
Christ s Natural Life.
THE thought presented in the close of the
preceding chapter receives its illustrations
in almost every part of the Scriptures. Its
importance demands that they should be
given at some ^ength, although it may re
quire for that purpose many consecutive
pages. Let us commence with the stupen-
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 151
dous exhibition that was made on Sinai.
Taken by itself it might seem utterly incredi
ble, although its superhuman grandeur would
ever prevent its association with the myths of
any other religion. Such a breach in nature,
we say, surpasses belief when viewed alone.
But when we have read all that precedes,
when we have followed on in that flow of
events, ever deepening in the intensity of its
interest, ever taking in a wider field of vision,
ever rising to a loftier region of thought,
when the mind has thus become filled with
the utmost power of the attending associa
tions, when it is lifted up to the spiritual alti
tude of the scene, then all things else assume
a like elevation ; the darkness and the flames,
the fearful thunderings, the quaking earth,
the " sound of the trumpet waxing long and
loud," even the awful voice, become consistent
and probable events ; yea, they would even
seem to be natural events. When, moreover,
the thought is carried onward to the remote
historical consequences of that great an-
152 THE DIVINE HUMAN
nouncement of a law from heaven, when we
take into view the influence it has exercised
and still exercises in our world, then it is that
the wonder ceases we were going to say,
but no, the grandeur, the mystery, the sur
passing marvellousness. remain undiminished :
it is the incredibility that has vanished ; for
the marvellous, the extraordinary, may be
credible, yea, under certain conditions, the
most credible of supposed occurrences. When
the soul is thus filled with both the emotion and
the reason of the scene, it seems to us just
the right interposition, at the right time, in
the right way, and for the most rational ends.
God proclaiming a law to a people chosen as
the conservators of the highest religious
truth ; what more reasonable than this ? His
accompanying that proclamation by an out
ward attesting majesty as shown in corres
ponding phenomena of the outward physical
world ; what in itself more credible ? Would
it not, on the other hand, be something
strange to think of, that a world should be
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 153
created, a race of intelligent and religious
beings brought into existence, and that race
pass away without any such communication
from its unseen maker, without any exhibition
of unearthly glory to cast a ray upon its be
wildering night of nature, or to relieve the
dreary materiality of its long unvaried physi
cal continuance ? There are two positions
which are out of harmony both for the rea
son and the imagination : the astoundingly
supernatural in the creation of man, the un
broken natural, or the total absence of the
superhuman, in all God s dealings with him
since. One or the other of these must be
given up. The human race is uncreated, or
He who made it can speak to it, and does
sometimes speak to it. Nature is from eter
nity, or it may be interrupted, and has been
interrupted, in time. The rejection of the
supernatural all the way up to creation, is
the rejection of creation itself, both for man
and the world. It is well for the truth, that
in these latter days of keen inquiry, all un-
7 *
154 THE DIVINE HUMAN
tenable middle grounds are clearing up, and
the mind is being brought face to face with
sharp and decisive issues.
But to proceed with our illustrations ; there
is, perhaps, nothing in the Scriptures that
presents more clearly the holy, religious
supernatural in distinction from what may be
called the monstrous, or the legendary, than
that wondrous sight of the desert, " the
bush that burned with fire and was not con
sumed." On the scale of magnitude and
outward force it is surpassed by the convul
sions of nature that took place in the deluge,
or that attended the descent of God upon
Sinai ; but for silent grandeur there is noth
ing beyond it in the Bible. So noiseless and
motionless the scene, so calm in its impres-
siveness, it would seem, in outward display,
hardly to rise above the natural, the strange
natural, we may say, that belonged to that
remarkable place. The rationalist might,
with some plausibility, attempt to explain it
as a mirage of the desert. It is its unearth-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 155
liness, its ghostliness, if we could keep the
full power of that old word, that so deeply
affects the mind ; like "the still small voice"
that came to Elijah, or like Christ walking
on the nightly waters when "the disciples
cried out for fear, thinking that they had seen
a spirit." Such was the effect upon the mind
of Moses. The prophet s shepherd life had
shown him many weird aspects of nature in
that wild region ; he had felt the awe of that
lonely spot, held sacred and oracular, even
then, from a long antiquity. (T) But this ap
pearance had in it more of the religio loci than
he had ever felt before. "And Moses said,
I will turn aside now and see this great sight,"
mn fcian rran&n, visionem hanc magnam, c why
it is the bush is not burned. And the Lord
said unto him, come not nigh, put off thy
shoe from thy foot, for the place whereon
thou standest is holy ground. 7 The poetic
interest is, indeed, of the highest order ;
there is a sublime beauty in the pictured
scene that might vividly impress the imagina-
156 THE DIVINE HUMAN
tion of the reader, though without necessarily
producing belief. But when there comes
forth from the mysterious flame that an
nouncement of the Eternal, "I am that I
am," I am Jehovah, " this is my name, and
this my memorial to all generations," how
perfect is felt to be the harmony between the
supernatural and the transcending revelation
of which it was made the sign. We allude
not here to the mystical or typical, which
some, perhaps, would find in the special form
of this representation ; it is enough for our
present view that we simply regard it in its
credibility as an act above nature, employed
as a witness of the holiest spiritual truth.
Again : When Moses " stretches out his
hand over the sea," when he says unto the
people, "Fear ye not, stand still and behold
the salvation of the Lord," we expect the
retiring of the waters ; the event as narrated
does not surprise us even by its strangeness-
it is in such perfect unison with the sustained
grandeur of all the acts and all the divine
IN THE SCKIPTURES. 157
teachings that precede and follow it. But,
says the objector, these stories do not sur
prise us because they are in our Scriptures,
which we have been accustomed to regard as
full of the marvellous : Has not every nation
had its supernatural ? were not the heathen
myths also believed, and are they not still
believed ? It is, indeed, true, that every
nation has had its supernatural ; but this
only shows how deeply the tendency to be
lieve it, and to regard it as probable in cer
tain conditions, has its ground in the human
soul. The general answer meets broadly,
but conclusively, the general objection. In
reply to the more special parallel it might be
said, that these heathen myths were not be
lieved as the Bible narrations are credited ;
they are not believed in the same way, they
are not believed by the same class of minds,
they do not thus retain their hold upon the
most cultivated, the most profound, as well
as the most religious thinkers of past and
present ages. But there is an easier, as well
158 THE DIVINE HUMAN
as more conclusive reply. We take the most
direct and promptly decided issue. The cases
are utterly unlike in their ground statements.
There is no resemblance between such narra
tions as these we have cited from the Bible,
and the deformed Hindoo, Greek, or Scandi
navian "myths 77 that some would compare
with them. The easy unexamined assumption
of such similarity confounds the unthinking
and the unlearned ; but all investigation
proves that the difference is immense, total,
we might say, in every aspect. Would we
see this resemblance, place them side by side.
As Jehovah to Thor, as the Holy One of the
Prophets to Vishnu, as the God and Father
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to
Zeus, as the Hebrew Prophecy to the
Grecian Epic, as the Psalms of David to the
Odes of Pindar, as Moses to Minos, as that
unique drama in which powers earthly and
unearthly are striving for the integrity of
Job to the myths of the ^Eschylean tragedy,
as the idea of &lt;( Covenant 77 to the idea of
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 159
Fate, as the idea of a Messiah to the idea of
a Hercules, as the Olympic games to the
" Fight of (Faith," so is the sublime super
natural of the Bible to the monstrous, im
pure, or merely fanciful conceptions of the
heathen. The difference is every where,
in the essential reason* in the inward spirit,
in the outward form. He that hath eyes to
see must see it ; he that hath a soul to feel
must understand it. We could ask no
higher earthly evidence of the unearthliness
of the Christian Scriptures than just this
parallel. They are not merely arbitrarily
selected points. As in the examples cited,
so is it with the supernatural of the Bible
every where. It is never monstrous, gro
tesque, legendary, unmeaning, fanciful, but
ever dignified, solemn, pure, holy, in strictest
keeping with every accompanying emotion,
and so preserving that marvellous air of fact,
that feeling of truthfulness, that sober im
pression of reality, that comes from the con
sistent however high its sphere, and is, there-
160 THE DIVINE HUMAN
fore, ever present, in the most astounding as
in the most ordinary narrations of the Scrip
tures.
A similar feeling comes over us as we read
the story of that lone, fearful man, Elijah the
Tishbite ? How terrific in its justice, yet
how majestic in its consistency, is the divine
interposition against the idolatrous priests,
when the worship of the true God was dying
out in Israel, and but few were known as re
maining who had not bowed the knee to
Baal ! Even we had a religious interest in
that remote scene. The natural had come
to such a pass as to demand the interven
tion of the supernatural. The "Lord must
come forth from the hiding-place of his
power," or the light goes out from the only
altar that was to be kept ever burning for
the ages and generations to come. But
throughout the whole history of this un
earthly Seer, what interests us in a most pe
culiar manner is the striking harmony of the
highest miraculous with the simplicity and
IN THE SCRIPTUKES. 161
truthfulness of the ordinary life. What a
charm they have for us, and, at the same
time, how morally impressive these life-like
pictures of the ancient Israel ! The Prophet s
sojourn " by the brook Cherith that is before
Jordan," his journey to " Sarepta, a city
which is near unto Sidon," the widow s un
failing cruise of oil, long since passed into a
proverbial saying to denote the unfailing
providence of God, that graphic scene where
Elijah sends his servant to watch from the
top of Carmel the signals of the coming rain,
the repose under the juniper tree, the
heaven-provided sustenance, the Lord s talk
ing with the Prophet at the cave in Horeb,
the familiar yet startling question, "Where
art thou, Elijah ? how life-like is it all ! how
truth-like in the midst of the most astound-
in gly marvellous, how minute in circumstan
tial fact, and yet, with no loss of dignity, no
abatement of ever-thrilling awe ! And then,
that pure religious teaching present in every
act ! it is this that gives it such a moral con-
162 THE DIVINE HUMAN
sisteucy, taking away its incredibility, and
making it so unlike the unmeaning and im
pure wonders of a false religion.
Thus, especially, does that most remark
able scene in Horeb rise to the very height
of the natural as well as the sublime. It is
just what we are led to expect, Deity so
holding converse with his faithful servant,
the ever-present One thus talking in the
solitude of nature to the man who, for his
sake, and for his worship s sake, had fled
from the world ! If it is not so with us in our
own personal experience, we cannot help
feeling that there must be a lack of that re
ligious intercourse, that personal nearness to
God, which would make it seem as probable
as it is in itself both rational and true. But
how easy, we may say, are such associations
of thought and feeling in connection with
these striking narratives. The two depart
ments of the world seem to blend together.
In its association with the deeply and fear
fully religious, the natural acquires a new
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 163
dignity ; it seems to rise up into the region
of the supernatural. On the awful summit
of Horeb nature becomes divine ; and we
can hardly tell which has most to impress
the soul, the " fire, the wind, the earth
quake," or the still small voice that attests
the near presence of the higher power. We
are lifted up to a plane of thought where
much becomes credible that would altogether
transcend belief if viewed from the lower
horizon of the soul. It is just because the
constant reading of the Scriptures produces
this elevation of thought, that its miraculous
retains that hold upon the Christian faith
which the sceptic cannot understand.
But it is in the history of Christ that the
idea on which we are dwelling receives its
most powerful verification. A life so un
earthly, so heavenly, so spiritual, so tran
scending nature, so full of a divine power
manifesting itself in every word and act, so
spent in nights of prayer, and days of sub-
limest teaching ! how out of all keeping
164 THE DIVINE HUMAN
does it seem, that to a state so earth- tran
scending in its spirituality, there should be no
corresponding witness of the supernatural !
There has ever been on the earth some feel
ing of this kind in respect to men esteemed
superlatively holy ; but these have been
saints just so far as they followed Christ, or
were in Christ, to use those Scripture words
to which nothing else in language is equiva
lent. Christ was the original power, the
fountain of all earthly holiness ; He " was
the Life," the new transcending life, as it
"came forth from the Father into the
world. 7 As we read this life in its natural
or unmiraculous aspects we now mean we
recognize the association of the superhuman
as we do not in other cases. There is a
demand for its presence, as not only a fitting
but an indispensable accompaniment. The
idea cannot be complete without it. Such
power over the soul ! it must extend to the
body and the physical life ; the absence of
this healing energy would have been the
IN THE SCKIPTURES. 165
difficulty to be explained, the feature in the
narrative not easy of belief. Such a life and
such a death ! the resurrection is the only
appropriate sequence of a career on earth,
yet so unearthly ; the ascension into heaven
is the only appropriate finale to a drama so
heavenly and divine.
The serious reader cannot help feeling that
in the life of Christ, as given to us by the
Evangelists, there is something more than a
supernatural gift, or the occasional power of
working miracles, as something imparted
from without, or only exercised by himself
through special effort in each particular case.
We are impressed, rather, with the idea of
the constant supernatural, as a veiled power,
not so much requiring an effort for its mani
festation as a restraint to prevent it beaming
forth before unholy eyes that could not bear,
or might profane, the sight. In that earthly
tabernacle there was the constant dwelling of
the Shekinah, more powerfully present when
alone, perhaps, or with a few chosen ones of
166 THE DIVINE HUMAN
assimilated spiritual temperament, than in
the city or the rural crowd. Such must have
been the feeling of the more devout souls
admitted to nearest intercourse. " Thou art
the Christ the Son of the Living God," is an
exclamation called out more by the over
powering effect of this constant presence,
than by any great public displays of miracu
lous power. It is this, more than anything
else, that is attested by the holy Apostle
John in the beginning of his First Epistle
" That which was from the beginning, which
we have heard, which we have seen with our
eyes, which our hands have handled of the
Word of Life ; for the Life was manifested
and we saw it, and we testify, and tell unto
you of that Eternal Life, which was with the
Father and was manifested unto us. 7 The
reference is not so much to striking outward
displays as to the constant spiritual efful
gence ever beaming on the soul of the
spiritual disciple, and sometimes, perhaps
even to the eye of sense, surrounding the
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 167
person of Christ with an outward glory.
From the inward supernatural, as from a
never intermitting fountain, proceeded the
outward miracle-working power, as exhibited
in distinct acts. There is, at times, strong
evidence of an effort to veil even these from
public knowledge. Again and again are
persons charged "to tell no man what they
had seen and heard." As the thought can
not be for a moment entertained that this was
either affectation or policy, it can be explain
ed on no other ground than the one here
taken. Thus, too, are we told of a constant
virtue dwelling in the Saviour s person ; as
in the story of the woman who " touched the
hem of His garment that she might be heal
ed." Her spiritual state, that is, her pure
faith, brought her in a living relation to this
power so veiled to the unbelieving or merely
curious multitude. It was not mere super
stition on her part, as some would explain it,
or a false feeling, though mingled with some
degree of a right faith. Our Saviour does
168 THE DIVINE HUMAN
himself sanction her thought when he says
(Luke 8 : 46), "For I know that power
(dfoafiiq) hath gone forth from me" not
failed, certainly, or lost, but spoken of as
having flowed forth from himself to some
spiritual recipient. We have a Protestant
fear of the Romish abuse of this view in their
doctrine of relics, and of a wonder-working
agency proceeding from the bodies of the
saints ; but this fear should not blind us to
the clear import of such plain Scriptures.
The Romanists ascribe it to dead bodies, to
the dead bodies of men who when living had
an imperfect personal righteousness ; but here
was the Life itself. It is credible, it is even
to be expected that the supernatural should
shine out through a natural so elevated
above the ordinary condition of humanity,
a natural, human indeed to its utmost core,
and yet so different from that of the fallen
world around it.
There is a deep mystery even in our com
mon physical energy. The strength of the
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 169
body is, in its ultimate resolution, a power
of the quiescent spirit. Activity, force, yea,
even, in some sense, motus, or outgoing
energy, are attributes of soul, even when at
rest, as much as thought, or will, or emotion.
The present bodily organization, instead of
a necessary aid, may be, in fact, a limiting,
a restraint upon a tremendous power, that
needs to be confined as long as it is joined to
a selfish or unholy will, even as we chain
the madman in his cell. Sometimes, even
in common life, there are fearful exhibitions
of the loosening of these material bonds. In
the last stages of bodily weakness, appar
ently, some delirium of the soul, if we may
call it such, brings out a power of nerve and
muscle irresistible to any ordinary strength,
inexplicable to any ordinary physiological
knowledge. The cases, indeed, are vastly dif
ferent, and yet there is some analogy. Such
views of the common organism do not at all ac
count for the higher power that may dwell in
a perfectly holy spirituality ; but they render
8
170 THE DIVINE HUMAN
it credible ; they prepare us to believe in it,
yea, to feel it as a spiritual dissonance if there
be wholly lacking some high command of
nature in connection with a perfect faith and
a holy will ever in harmony with the divine.
It is the Scriptures, however, that must
furnish our only reliable ground of argument
on this mysterious subject ; and here we find
no small proof of such a constant indwelling
glory of the supernatural as distinguished
from an occasional miraculous gift. In cer
tain passages there is the strongest expres
sion of Christ s unwillingness to gratify
curiosity by the display of an outward sign ;
in others there is shown an evident reluc
tance to have this holy influence the subject
of any profane or gossiping rurnor. But
again, he exhibits it of his own accord to
chosen disciples, and then it has the appear
ance of a manifestation, to favored souls, of
a power and a spiritual glory ever more truly
present in his retired than in his public life.
Such is the impression left upon the mind by
IN THE SCRIPTUKES. 171
the account of the Transfiguration. "Jesus
taketh Peter, and James, and John, into a
high mountain apart (xa-r idiav). And he
was changed," transformed (^eTa^oQcpcjj^)
before them." The jwo^fj dovlov* could no
longer hide the jUOQcprj Otov that was com
monly veiled beneath it. " And his face
shone as the sun, and his raiment became
white as the light." It was that same ap
pearance then, which seems to have become
the permanent manifestation of his glory in
all earthly visits after his ascension. It was
thus that he shone in the vision of Patmos.
It was in such a robe of light that he made
himself visible to Paul on his way to Damas
cus. It could not have been merely assumed
for the occasion. It was the glory that he
ever had, his constant glory, once veiled, but
then without a shade. "He was transform
ed before them. 1 It is the fact of their
presence on which, in reading, we must lay
* " The form of a servant."" The form of God."
Phil. 2 : 6, 7.
172 THE DIVINE HUMAN
the emphasis ; this glorious manifestation,
not new to Christ, not unusual, perhaps, in
his earthly state, they for once are permitted
to behold. Peter, and James, and John, are
selected to witness one instance of the
Saviour s intercourse, it may be his frequent
intercourse, with celestial beings and the
holy departed. The glory of Tabor may
have been often with him in his rapt de
votional hours, a glory known to himself
and seen by heavenly eyes. Often may He
have talked with Moses and Elias, often
" been seen of angels," often had around him
" voices from the excellent glory," often heard
the chanting of the response, "This is my
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."
Could we have the history of Christ as written
from the celestial side, his spiritual life as it
may one day, perhaps, be revealed to us in
the Gospels of Eternity, it might be seen
that there were, indeed, many such heavenly
visitations, with their heavenly messages, at
tendant on his nights of prayer and days of
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 173
holy meditation on the mountain top or in
the desert waste.
Something, too, of the same feeling comes
over us as we read the account of Christ
walking on the waters : " And in the fourth
watch of the night Jesus came to them walk
ing on the sea/ jieQtTtat&v, or, as he was
walking on the sea. Not with philological
conclusiveness, perhaps, yet still quite strong
ly, does the participle here suggest the
thought of usual or frequent action, of which
this was one example, striking, chiefly be
cause of being the one, the only one, that
was witnessed by the disciples. We want to
give the word the same rendering, and there
is no reason why we should not take the
thought in the same way as it comes to the
mind in Matt. 4. 18: "And as Jesus was
walking by the sea of Galilee he saw two
brethren." It was not the only walk he had
ever taken by the shore of that oft-frequent
ed lake ; the impression is rather the con
trary, and that, too, as derived from the very
174 THE DIVINE HUMAN
form and force of the word, the same in both
these examples. On one of these occasions,
" he saw two brethren." So here, " In the
fourth watch came Jesus unto them as he
was walking on the sea." Was this a mere
wonder-making ? Was it done to frighten
those timid men ? or was it needed, in addi
tion to his other miracles, for the confirming
of their faith ? There is no evidence that
he designed to meet them there for any such
purpose. Indeed, the contrary is quite
clearly intimated in the parallel passage
(Mark 6 : 48), xal tj^eta naQskQelv avtovq,
"He would have passed them by," or, "It
was in his mind to pass them by," as it may
be truly rendered with a clearness and
simplicity in strange contrast with the diffi
culties that a contrary assumption has
caused commentators to find in this most
plain yet significant passage. But why
came he at that hour walking on the
waters ? Elsewhere, as in Job 9 : 8, it
is presented as a peculiar power of Deity,
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 175
^j yn, o itoqincwaw n
"He who walketh upon the heights, or high
places of the sea." It was the sublime,
mysterious, spiritual act of a soul in a highly
rapt or supernatural state. We might as
well ask, Why went he up in the mountain
apart ? Why, even in the days of his child
hood, did he tarry alone by himself when
" friends were seeking him sorrowing ?" No
answer can be given or imagined in either
case, that does not refer us to the Redeemer s
own subjective state. Why walking thus at
that deep time of night over the wild and
lonely waves ? It was the unearthly act of
one filled with unearthly thoughts, and seek
ing a correspondence to them in the more
unearthly, or, as we might even call them,
supernatural aspects of the natural world.
If the answer cannot well be given in any
thing out of himself, why should we fear to
say that it was a rapt physical state, in har
mony with an elevated spiritual frame that
demanded it as its fitting outward action?
176 THE DIVINE HUMAN
The ecstasy of the soul lifts up the body.
There is something of this in the mere earthly
human experience. There is a spiritual con
dition that seems comparatively, if not abso
lutely, to loosen the power of gravity, to set
volition free, and release even the flesh from
the hold of earthly bonds. How much more
of this etherial soaring must there have
been in the ecstasies of Jesus? In the human
spiritual power, as known to us, there is,
indeed, nothing that can be strictly compared
with it ; and yet there is enough to render
credible such an absolute triumph over mat
ter in the case of one so holy and so heavenly
as Christ. There is an exquisite harmony of
thought in regarding the purer etherial ele
ment as the appropriate medium, and the
undulating waters as the fitting pediment
of one so lifted up above the grossness and
earthliness of the common humanity.
The writer would be cautious here. On
such a subject there is no safety in any specu
lations unless they keep near to the Scrip-
IN TILE SCRIPTURES. 177
tures and their fairly suggested range of
thought. On this account we may feel the
more confidence in noting the remarkable
connection of the passage. Thus, we are
told in the verse before, " And when Jesus
had sent away the multitude he went up the
mountain apart by himself to pray, and
when it was evening he was there alone."
It was in the fourth watch of the night thus
spent that Christ went forth in his ecstatic
walk upon the sea. The coincidence could
not have been a casual one ; the inspired
writer could not have so regarded it : with
all reverence, then, may the reader hold the
belief that the supernatural bodily state was
not so much a sign, or attesting miracle, as
the harmonious accompaniment to the rapt
devotion of the preceding hours. Why
should not the supposition be entertained
that Christ may have often thus walked upon
the waters ? Of his ordinary or natural life,
the Scriptures give us but glimpses ; how
much more, then, of his extraordinary or
178 THE DIVINE HUMAN
supernatural being may we regard as kept
beneath the vail.
We think there is no irreverence in such
thoughts. At all events, without any special
reasoning about spiritual and physical con
ditions, there is in Scripture itself good evi
dence that the human nature in Christ was
ever in this connection with the supernatural,
and that the special miraculous acts were
unveilings of a constant hidden power, rather
than special enablings or special efforts in
each particular case. Christ s own words
convey this thought "He is the resurrec
tion and the life. 77 It is the fair import of
the Scriptural language. Even when veiled
in human flesh, he is still the anavyaoiia,
the brightness of the Father, the express
image of his hypostasis. " We beheld his
glory, 77 says John, " the glory as of the Only
Begotten, full of grace and truth. 7 The
humanity, too, is a true humanity ; no one
was ever more perfectly human ; and yet so
wondrous is he, even in his manhood, that
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 179
it forces the idea of the superhuman and the
supernatural as not only the causal explana
tion of such an existence, but its own fitting,
yea, necessary complement.
CHAPTER XI.
THE NATURAL OF THE SCRIPTURES A PROOF OF THE SUPER
NATURAL Illustrations The Antediluvian "World Its Giant
Power of Crime -The Patriarchal Life Its Simple Ethics and
Theology Its " Faith Counted for Righteousness" How far
from the Cloudy Pantheistic Ideas The Xth of Genesis and it ?
Ethnology Ewalds Welt-alter Joseph The Israelites in
Egypt Pharaoh and Moses The Life in the Wilderness
The Heroic Age of Joshua Days of the Judges From
Samuel to Ezra We look right into that Old World Its
Vivid Truthfulness The Prophets The Monstrous Hypothe-
AND this presents the argument to whose
general statement much of what has been
said in the preceding pages is but prepara
tory. Given the natural in the Bible, the
supernatural follows as a logical or necessary
consequence ; given the credible, or that
which is to be received on grounds of ordi
nary belief, and the marvellous cannot be
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 181
rejected. Or, to give the statement another
form : setting aside, or passing over all that
can be called supernatural in the Bible, or
leaving it out of view in the first premiss, we
have remaining a series of narrations to
which no candid man can deny an inherent
truthfulness, a strong life-likeness in the de
lineation of events, in a word, a rational
historic probability unsurpassed by that of
any other writings ancient or modern. We
say no man can deny this who has truly
studied the phenomenon, or has a right feel
ing of what is deepest yet most human in
our human nature. Other religious books,
so called, destroy our belief in their super
natural, not more by its own wildness and
grotesque monstrosity than by the unnatural
and inhuman representations they connect
with it of the ordinary or natural life. With
the Scriptures it is just the reverse. Aside
from the miraculous, and all this may be
taken out without interrupting the history
or destroying the earthly consecution of
182 THE DIVINE HUMAN
earthly facts, no narratives are so natural,
so human, so inherently credible, as those
given to us in the Old and New Testaments.
Turn we first to that most scanty yet most
graphic picture of the Antediluvian world.
A bare skeleton indeed ; but what more
probable, what more credible, than^that the
race, if it ever had any beginning at all,
should have had some such beginning, some
such introduction into the world, some such
early condition as is there ascribed to them.
It is true that here the supernatural cannot
be wholly left out, for even science forces it
upon us ; but barely conceding the fact of a
creation some way not many thousand years
ago, and what a most perfect keeping in all
that follows, the long life of the new man
hood, the early fall into evil, the early pro
clivity to sensualism, the speedy corruption,
the mingling of the virtuous and the vile, the
greater velocity of the downward earthly
tendency, the predominance of the animal
after the first rebellion against truth and
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 183
conscience, the small number of the pious,
the few words touching that lonely man of
whom the reverence of after years "testified "
that " he walked with God and was not seen
to tarry long on earth, for God had taken
him away/ the strifes and separations, the
great increase of population, the sudden
growth of wickedness outwardly accelerated
then by the want of that dear-bought ex
perience which teaches men in this old age
of the world the prudential policy of indi
vidual and social restraint, the giant power
of appetite and passion in the early vigorous
human frame contributing to the same result,
the giant forms of vice, and, perhaps, the
monstrous physical births that were the con
sequence, the earth at last filled with vio
lence, " all flesh corrupting its way/ 7 and
hastening on to the utter physical as well as
moral ruin, if some power interpose not to
save a remnant by the necessary excision of
the multitude, and thus preserve a chosen
seed for a future and more hopeful world.
184 THE DIVINE HUMAN
How natural, how human, how true to the
life, as judged by all we now know of man,
or can easily conceive of him in that early
time, when sin was young, and passion
strong, and the morals of expediency had
not yet been reduced to a system on the
earth ! Can we believe in such a deluge of
evil ? then is it also easy to believe in that
deluge of cleansing waters as the great
means both of physical and moral regenera
tion to a ruined world. The life of man was
shortened, but a check was given to that
predominating animality which might have
reduced our nature to the condition of the
brute intensified by the malignity and intel
ligence of the daemon.
Or turn we next to that postdiluvian
patriarchal life, so simple, yet so grand in
its simplicity, so religious, as we might well
expect men to be after the traditions of such
a catastrophe, so fearing God, the One Great
God, El Shaddai, El Olam, El Eliun, Al
mighty, Eternal, Most High, and yet with a
IN THE SCKIPTURES. 185
creed extending so little beyond this prime
article, whether we regard it as natural or
revealed. u Shall not the Judge of all the
earth do right ?" This was the substance of
their ethics, as well as the sum of their the
ology. "They were pilgrims and sojourn-
ers upon earth ;" He who was their God,
the "God of the living, 7 was also the God
of the pious departed, who in some way,
they knew not how, still " lived unto Him. 7
This was the length and breadth of their
creed respecting a future state and a future
salvation. They trusted in God ; " they be
lieved God, and this was counted unto them
for righteousness." Such a faith we may
concede unto them, and call it natural if we
please. It is most natural, if by the term
we mean that which is most fitting, and, on
that account, most credible. It could be
shown that nothing would be more unnatural
than any connection of pantheistic ideas, or
of a symbolical polytheism, with that simple
patriarchal life. Both are monsters born at
186 THE DIVINE HUMAN
a later day, and generated in depraved
spiritual conjunctions unknown to the
earliest thinking. Let their religion, then,
be called the religion of nature ; we would
prefer, for our argument s sake, to have it
so. They believed in God ; but beyond this
exclude all the supernatural in act that has
found place in their Bible history. Leave
out the visions of angels, the hearing of
divine voices, and how truthful is it in all
that remains ! How strongly does this
ancient life impress us with a feeling of its
graphic and most intense reality ! What
mind could have drawn the picture without
having drawn from the life, whether that
life came to it from tradition or from inspi
ration !
And so of the collateral records. One
may be defied to imagine anything more
probable, in itself, than the ethnological
chart given to us in the Tenth of Genesis.
With what transport of delight would our
learned world have received it, how un-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 187
bounded would have been their confidence
in its correctness and its value, had it been
dug out of some Assyrian ruin, or decypher-
ed from some crumbling Egyptian monu
ment! A certain modern school has become
wonderfully familiar with this early world.
They have a sort of intuition that enables
them to go up far beyond where Herod
otus, and Manetho, and the Bible, and even
the hireoglyphics, fail them. There they
take their interior post of observation, and
think it all out for themselves. Very in
genious are they sometimes ; but what Ger
man mind so prolific in welt-alter, or what
Westminster reviewer can furnish us, from
any of their "subjective stand-points," a
hypothetical account of the early divisions
and races of mankind, more rational, more
likely in itself, more perfectly consistent with
all known subsequent history, than just the
one presented in this remarkable document
beyond all doubt so far surpassing any
known antiquity.
188 THE DIVINE HUMAN
The same features of inherent verity meet
us in the record of the Israelitish bondage,
and in that clear page of Egyptian history
standing out like some old-world geological
relic, we might say, so long before any
known chronicles of the later times ! Ro
mantic, indeed, but what a life-like romance
is the story of Joseph! Strange, indeed,
the coincidences, though not more remark
able than have taken place in more ordinary
life ; but in what other narrative have the
good and evil of the human soul been ever
blended in such truthful consistency of
thought and emotion ? been ever painted in
such perfect harmony with the universal
human consciousness ? Take away the
dreams, and what has more the air of veri
table history, more of that minute detail
and circumstantial coloring which the geog
raphy and chronology of Egypt could alone
impart to it, than the story of the plenty
and the famine ! We may dispense with
Herodotus and the monuments, in our in-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 189
quiry after the origin of the Egyptian land
divisions, and the cast privileges of the
priests. Here we have it brightly limned ;
the traditional copy of Manetho had become
sadly defaced in time ; we can, however,
restore it by the aid of Moses. But let us
travel down to a later dynasty, to the days
of that new monarch " who knew not
Joseph." Look at that world-ideal of the
irresponsible tyrant. No fancy ever made
him ; no human imagination could have kept
up a consistency, so well sustained, of char
acter and destiny. Leave out, if you please,
all that is miraculous in the plagues, or re
solve them into strictly physical events
coming at longer seeming intervals, and
having a miraculous air by being crowded
upon a brief historical canvas. There still
remains something that cannot be effaced
without effacing human nature. There
stand the figures of the prophet and the
king ; we have before us that truest of des
pots, that grandest of seers, that pride-
190 THE DIVINE HUMAN
hardened heart, that lofty enthusiasm or,
if you please, that stern fanaticism that
burthened people, with their vile, yet most
human-like, ingratitude towards their heroic
defender, that fearful retribution, that over
whelming fall, that song in the desert, when
" the horse and his rider had been cast into
the depths of the sea. 7 In the midst of such
scenes, as they are presented to the reader s
imagination, the avenging angel seems like a
demand of nature, and to fall into the rank
of expected events. But leaving out, we
say, everything of that kind, and where else
was there ever presented a narrative of
deeds on that high scale so like the truth !
The account has become familiar to us, but
that is not the secret of its power. Pharaoh
and Moses, we image them, at once, as
forms of living men ; they have more life
for us than Solon and Croesus, than Socrates
and the Athenian judges, than Seneca and
Nero, than any characters that were ever
drawn by the genius of Homer, or sketched
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 191
by the graphic pen of Tacitus. The scenes
are so vivid, though so far away ; so life-like,
though of such high proportion ; so natural,
though so grand, that we can hardly con
ceive their falsehood. What convergency of
scattered myths could have grown into such
a consistent whole ? What single mind
could ever have created a picture so de
fiant of the antiquating power of time ! It
has the same life for us now, in this remote
Western world, that it had more than three
thousand years ago on the banks of the Nile.
There it stands right before us, as though
written yesterday, clear as the pyramids,
fresh as the sculptures on the Karnak, and
with a meaning for the world how far be
yond any wisdom we may ever hope to get
from folios of monumental learning. It is,
in fact, a painting that never can grow old ;
for it is engraved, photographed, we might
say, in our human nature ; age only adds to
the brightness of its coloring ; the most
minute inspection, under the highest lens of
192 THE DIVINE HUMAN
antiquarian learning, only reveals its perfect
accuracy of line and shade. Can it be pos
sible that such a living sketch could have had
no original among the realities of the world ?
We pass on to the migration in the wilder
ness, the rebellion of the people against their
prophet, their murmurings against their God,
startling to the superficial view, yet how
credible when judged by the deeper knowl
edge of our greatly-depraved, and, with all
its powers of reason, ofttimes most irrational
humanity. Then naturally rises before us the
succeeding epoch, the return of the descend
ants of the Patriarchs to the old Fatherland,
and the divison of the reconquered inheri
tance. The first chapter in the heroic age is
past, and we find ourselves in the days of
the "Judges," the second race of hero chief
tains still filled with the traditional spirit of
the earlier day. They were men, and women,
too, of mightiest courage, of most lofty en
thusiasm ; the Scriptures say it was the Spirit
of the Lord that came mightily upon them ;
IN THE SCRIPTUEES. 193
but call it what you will, they were just the
men and women for the times, and their
spirit was just what was demanded for the
exigencies of the times, " when there was no
king in Israel, and each tribe and family did
that which was right in their own eyes."
How does each part of the sketch supply the
apparent defect of another, until all the por
tions combined blend into a whole of irresist
ible truthfulness ? The weakness of the
mere political bonds, the strength of the
ethnological affinities, the civil strifes, the
ancestral remembrances holding them to
gether in spite of all dividing causes, the
warrior faith of Gideon uniting " all Israel
as one heart and soul," the reaction to this
high state exhibiting itself in the demagog-
ism of Gaal the son of Ebed, the meaner or
unheroic traits that followed the great wars,
as shown in " the evil spirit that was put be
tween Abimelech and the men of Shechem,"
the frenzied curse of Jotham fulfilled in the
cruel strifes of the men who had murdered
9
194 THE DIVINE HUMAN
the children of their deliverer, the days of
Joshua again called to remembrance by the
religious heroism of Jepthah, the lawless
Danites who in all their filibustering wick
edness must have a priest and a Levite even
if they stole him, the terrible fruits of an
archy as shown in the revolting crime of the
" men of Gib^eji," and that sublime national
vengeance which brought together all Israel
as one man to punish these sons of Belial
and the tribe that refused to give them up,
we see it all ; from our distant place of ob
servation we perceive precisely the relations
of cause and effect in all their harmonious
play and fair analogies as presented to us in
these old-world scenes. Their plain chron
iclers had no philosophy of history ; but they
were inspired for a higher office, to set be
fore us a perfect representation of humanity
as the materials from which others might
construct a philosophy, deep or shallow in
proportion as they can enter into the spirit
of this strange people, so intensely human,
IN THE SCEIPTURES. 195
and yet, in many striking respects, so differ
ent from all other men.
And then the national history in Palestine
from Samuel to Ezra. We venture the as
sertion, that never in the annals of the race
has there been so much of nature, of pure
humanity, yea, of the most important his
torical ideas, so compressed, yet so graphi
cally given, in the compass of so few pages.
There is a light in truth, a self-evidencing
light, that helps us to see across that wide
chasm of centuries ; we discern objects
plainly on the other side ; we look right into
that old world ; so perfect is the diorama
that we see it to be a real, living, moving
world, with a wondrous life impressing us
with a sense of its distinct reality more
strongly, perhaps, than any page that comes
nearest to us in our own most modern his
tory. To come down to later times, what
can be more stirring, more like a veritable,
undeniable thing, whose falsehood, when
once the image has been distinctly formed,
196 THE DIVINE HUMAN
it is more difficult to conceive, than the rapt
enthusiasm and burning harangues of the
Jewish prophets. We refer now to their
subjective state as an intense human reality,
irrespective of any supposed supernatural
cause, or of any assumed truth of their pre
dictions. In those impassioned appeals the
whole national and genealogical history
comes over again. About this time, as some
hold, the Pentateuch and the earlier parts
of the Old Testament were written, in other
words, the whole Jewish history created.
But what a monstrous proposition this !
When carefully examined, or even barely
looked at, can anything surpass it in improb
ability, did anything ever come from the
learned lovers of paradox, that presented
such a demand upon our credulity ? We
must imagine the almost unimaginable ab
surdity of a whole national legislation, with
all the manners and peculiarities and modes
of thought that might be supposed to grow
out of it in the course of ages, a national
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 197
archaeology full of supposed glorious remi
niscences, a national poetry seemingly in
spired by these shadowy nonentities, a na
tional didactic or ethical literature seemingly
grounded on such a baseless ancestral wis
dom, a national culture hypothetically the
growth of historical centuries that never had
any existence, or any adequate existence for
such a purpose, we must imagine all this,
we say, from Genesis to Ezra, to have been
a compilation, if not an entire forgery, of
the latest prophetic period itself, or else the
Hebrew prophets give us the most truthful
as well as the most animated picture of a
national life that was ever painted in the
annals of the world.
CHAPTER XII.
THE INTERNAL TRUTHFULNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES Three Hy
potheses 1. A Veritable History 2. An Entire Forgery
3. A Traditional Compilation The Second Imposs.ble
Keasons Peculiar Character of Historical and Literary For
geries Wholly Alien to the Idea of that Age If the History
Forged, how much must be Forged with it The Third Hy
pothesisImagined Method Difficulties Unfitness of the
Later Times of Jewish History for such a work Still it is
Plausible, unless there is some Internal Obstacle There is such
an Obstacle How History arose in Other Nations Might be
so Regarded as arising from the Jewish, were it not for a Te-
culiar Trait The Bible a Book of Numbers Compare the
Pentateuch with the First Volume of Grote s History of Greece
Driven to the first Hypothesis.
LET us dwell on this, for it is deserving of
our most attentive consideration. The study
of the Bible, as it ought to be studied,
brings us to a sharp and unavoidable issue.
The Jewish histories are the most astounding
of forgeries, or they are the most truthful
writings the world has ever seen. This can
be made clear by simply presenting the only
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 199
three theories that can possibly be had re
specting them, and which may be thus
stated :
1st. It is an authentic and veritable his
tory, written, as a whole, and in all its parts,
at the time or times at which they purport
to be written, and by persons having a near
knowledge of the events recorded, whether
that knowledge came from inspiration, or
personal acquaintance, or accurate tradition
carefully preserved and capable of being
tested by its close contiguity with the acts
recorded, on the one hand, and the first re
cording chronicler, on the other.
2d. It is an entire forgery, made in the
later periods of the Jewish nationality in
order to give to it an ancestry and an
tiquity to which in truth it had no claim,
all its details being sheer invention, its
archaeology, its chronology, its geography,
its political and social delineations being
the work of some single mind or minds
conspiring for that set purpose, and setting
200 THE DIVINE HUMAN
themselves deliberately to the work of so
minute and comprehensive a falsehood.
3d. It is a compilation made in the latter
days, but from sources existing before.
These are traditions and fragmentary rec
ords, of which the latter are to a good de
gree, though not entirely, mythical, and the
former had grown out of obscure ancient
events, having some ground of truth, and so
honestly believed, but exaggerated from age
to age, with a continual addition of the
marvellous and the supernatural, until at
last their growth was checked by their being
incorporated into a more comprehensive and
methodical history.
One of these is true, for here are the
books ; here is the Jewish nationality, as
it has been for ages crystallized in the very
heart of history. The first, then, we say, is
possible, involving no absurdity (even if we
connect the supernatural with it), and must
be received as against the second, or if the
issue is confined to them alone. The second
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 201
is utterly incredible, unimaginable in design,
impossible in execution. No one would even
think of it, who has formed any conception
of what it actually involves. The third is
probable, natural, apparently consistent with
what is known of the formation of other
early history, and would have a fair claim to
be received, if there is no higher opposing
evidence, or if there is not something in the
Bible history that altogether shuts out any
such comparison with apparently correspond
ing annals of other nations. That there is
something of this kind, and that, too, patent
on the very face of the Jewish Scriptures,
we think can be clearly maintained. In
short, there is a serious difficulty in the
plausible third, which, equally with the utter
impossibility of the second, drives us back to
the first as the only hypothesis consistent
with nature and truth.
The absolute, wholesale forgery must be
rejected. It is incredible in itself; it is
incredible from the outward difficulties that
9*
202 THE DIVINE HUMAN
must attend such an undertaking. It is in
herently incredible. No motive can be as
signed for it. Let us imagine it, if we can.
Let us carry ourselves back into the period
supposed, with all its surroundings, as far as
they may be known from other sources ; let
us try to think of some single scribe, or
some number of scribes, in the days of Heze-
kiah, preparing pens and parchment rolls for
such a purpose, even to impose upon a
nation a history unknown to the national
life, a religion and a worship unconnected
with any previous sentiments either of rev
erence or superstition. The very difficulty
of the conception shows the far greater
difficulty of anything like success in the exe
cution. The story of Samson is far less in
credible ; the worship, by the Jews, of the
Egyptian Apis, or of the calves of Jeroboam,
would be even less irrational and absurd.
Historical and literary forgeries belong to
a peculiar state of things very different from
anything we can conceive of as existing
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 203
among the Jews in the days of Ezra. There
is ever some wide age-agitating interest,
some sharply controverted world-idea, to
which they are brought in aid. It is on this
account that they are ever collateral, never
wholesale ; ever fragmentary, partial, remote,
avoiding direct connection with the present
state of things, never creating de novo not
only the collateral aids but also the entire
cause to which they are brought in aid.
Hence they are ever assigned to an antiquity
cut off by deep intervening chasms from any
present emergency they are cited to explain.
Thus the forgeries charged upon the Patris
tic period were broken Sibylline verses, or
scraps of oracles ; they were fragments from
the days of Orpheus, as was supposed, or
the Egyptian Trismegistus. But these Jew
ish forgeries must be forgeries all the way
down to the days of the forgers. They con
nect themselves with an immediate past of
which they to whom they are addressed have
no knowledge. They are wholesale, too, as
204 THE DIVINE HUMAN
we have said ; they must include, and do in
clude, if this most difficult theory be correct,
not only a forged history, but along with it a
forged poetry, a forged national literature,
a forged ethics, a forged religion, a forged
worship, forged prayers and hymns, a forged
ritual system all made to suit, forged nation
al songs for forged deliverances, a forged
geography, at least in its names as adapted
to ancient local events, a forged chronology,
together with the forgery of many thousand
proper names of men all having a signifi
cance in the vernacular language, and that
significance corresponding so wonderfully to
the times and circumstances in which they
are supposed to be given. Even the lan
guage itself must, to some extent, be forged ;
it must be cut over like an old garment and
made to fit the earlier as well as the later
body. Old words must be forged, and obso
lete grammatical forms, and obscure passages
made on purpose, such as to demand the
Scholiast s aid, and all this by men in whose
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 205
language there had been previously no writ
ing, no books, no literature, and, of course, no
means of culture either for the individual or
the common mind. We cannot receive this.
The Jews had books, they had varied writ
ings, they had a poetry, a history, a religion,
they had schools and public teachers, they had
men who wrote and were known as writers,
they had all this in the days preceding
Ezra, and must, therefore, have had it long
before, and we must believe that they had
it, just as their history implies, or else admit
all these absurd and impossible ideas.
There is a story of a man, and of some
learning, too, who maintained that all we
have, or seem to have, of classical antiquity,
was a wholesale forgery committed by some
monks of the middle ages. It was not so
extravagant as this idea of a Jewish forgery
inasmuch as there is in the Jewish nation
ality and its collateral life a much more
truthful coherence than we find in Greek and
Roman history. It is less extensive indeed,
206 THE DIVINE HUMAN
but loftier in its aim, far deeper in the
grounds and consistency of its national ex
istence.
But why dwell upon this view ? It is not
only incredible ; it is utterly impossible, and
the idea is to be dismissed at once. We be
lieve that no man of standing as a scholar
or a thinker now really holds it, however
much he might be willing to give such an
impression favor with the common mind.
The more thoughtful among the German
rationalistic interpreters see its utter absurd
ity, although some of their speculations can
be maintained on no other basis. In short,
take all the Old Testament supernatural,
separate or combined, and it cannot present
a problem so hard for our understanding, or
a statement so difficult for our faith, as this
hypothesis when carried out in all its legiti
mate deductions.
There remains, then, the first view, unless
there be some good ground for resting in
the third. Is the Jewish history a compila-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 207
tion ? not a forgery, but an honest gather
ing of national traditions, and some few iso
lated and fragmentary records made from
previous traditions, though none of them,
except perhaps those that belong to the
latest times, coming from persons contempo
raneous with, or near in time to, the events
narrated or recorded? A mere recension
of writings all existing before, though now
arranged in order, would not suit the hy
pothesis. It would not differ enough from
the common view of the scriptures to make
a difference of argument. Historical tra
ditions having a strong outline character,
national laws and customs connected tra
ditionally with supposed early events, these
events thrown into an unknown antiquity,
regarded indeed as old, but with an absence
of any definite or consistent chronology,
add to these local traditions, family tradi
tions, together with some few writings of a
lyrical rather than a documentary character,
songs of war or hymns of devotion, with
208 THE DIVINE HUMAN
here and there, perhaps, a monumental rec
ord rudely carved on rock or temple, and
we have just the materials for our third view
arid the arguments demanded for its consis
tency. The question then is, did such a work
of compilation, or gathering and shaping of
all floating historical element, take place in
those later times to which some would give
the name of known or authentic history,
(even calling it "the historical 7 emphati
cally in distinction from the mythical,) al
though it is, in fact, just that period of the
Jewish nationality which is the least known
and most confused of all.
It is certainly a very remarkable thought,
not indeed wholly subversive of this view,
but suggested immediately by it, that the
beginning of a nation s written or authentic
history should be the beginning of that por
tion which is the darkest in its entire annals.
For such in the subjective effect, certainly,
or the truthfulness of its impression is the
character and position of the four or five
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 209
centuries of Jewish history between the
captivity and the coming of Christ. It stands
like a dark hiatus between the clear pictures
of the Old and New Testament ; on either
side a well-defined and cultivated territory,
between them a pathless and tangled forest.
What a light is there about Moses, and
David, and Solomon, and Hezekiah, and
Isaiah, as compared with Onias, and Hyr-
canus, and Aristobulus, and other dark figures
that flit about in the chaotic waste over
which, even with the aid of Josephus, we
find it so hard to make our way. Every
reader of this last named author must have
felt something of this. How sudden is the
transition, and how sensible we are of it,
when he passes from the known field of the
canonical writings ! It is as when the travel
ler leaves the fertile land, or the border of
the green oasis, for the arid Sahara. If the
Jewish written history first commenced with
this period, then was the morning the be
ginning of the night.
210 THE DIVINE HUMAN
But waving all these considerations, let
us proceed with the hypothesis, and see
what its completion involves. In the days
of Ezra, then, or within a generation or two
either way, some of the wiser men of the
Jewish nation sat themselves down to this
gathering of the national memories before
they should be forever lost. They talked
with the old fathers of every tribe, they
visited monumental places, they examined
carefully the scattered current traditions,
they hunted out every written scrap they
could find of the national songs ; they lis
tened to the Prophet or poet, the Hebrew
Ish Elohim or inspired " Man of God, 7 the
Ouoc, avr}Q, or national bard, as he chanted
the old unwritten melodies, or those peculiar
Messianic Oracles in which this strange race
had ever claimed for themselves a world-
destiny ; they looked into the traditions of
other neighboring nations supposed to be
remotely though genealogically allied, and
through them endeavored to ascend to a
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 211
higher patriarchal age, giving themselves the
rank of First Born among the Sons of Men.
These materials they endeavor, as well as
they can, but with all honesty, to get into
some chronological order. This would be,
indeed, their hardest task, but having suc
ceeded in it, as they supposed, with tolerable
fidelity, though necessarily leaving much un
known and still more that was utterly ir
reconcilable, they next supply, but honestly
supply, from their best conjectures, the old
national ideas, religions, laws, that could
alone account for such remarkable traditions,
and for such a peculiar attitude as they must be
conscious of having toward the other nations
of the earth. Now in all this we have sup
posed them honest ; for it is, in fact, essen
tial to the integrity of the hypothesis, and
becomes of great importance to the ques
tion whether the Jewish history as we have
it now lying in our Bibles could ever have
been compiled by truthful men from such
materials, and to the still further and in-
212 THE DIVINE HUMAN
volved question whether, therefore, this
third of our suppositions does not, after
all, contain a difficulty equal to, if not still
greater than, anything in the second. Still
they might be honest, and yet exaggerate.
They might have no idea of direct or sys
tematic forgery, and yet the national pride
might lead them unconsciously to give a col
oring to certain traditions, and perhaps,
without intending any cheat, to enhance the
marvellous that had already been growing
through ages of successive transmission.
As an a priori supposition, then, this third
scheme, as we have presented it, and very
fairly presented it, we think, looks extremely
probable. If we had never opened our
Bibles to see how strange a history they
actually contain, how different from that of
any other ancient nation, we should regard
it as a most rational mode of accounting for
the matter. There is an inherent plausibility
in the thing ; it is so like the way in which
history may have arisen among other peoples,
IN THE SCEIPTUKES. 213
that we are inclined to receive it if there be
nothing in the way, no formidable obstacle,
at least, in the very history supposed to be
the result of such a process.
But there is something in the way ; there
is just such a formidable obstacle. If they
have produced this history we now have
in our Bibles, then the compilers of these
Jewish annals (if they are but compilers) can
not be so relieved from that charge of direct,
palpable, and conscious forgery which we find
it so difficult to believe of them, and for the
sake of avoiding which this third hypothe
sis was resorted to. There is that peculiarity
in the Jewish Scriptures, and in the Jewish
history throughout, which brings into the
third scheme all the difficulty, or the greatest
difficulty, of the second, and that, too, with
out its consistent boldness of design and
execution. It is not hard to conceive how
the early Greek history thus grew up, or the
Greek myths as they may well be called, and
how they were afterwards arranged in the
214 THE DIVINE HUMAN
best chronological order and political method
that could be obtained from such chaotic
materials. It is all very much as we should
a priori expect to find it; gleams of light
appearing here and there, a few consecutive
lines of historical strata running on with
tolerable clearness and consistency, then in
terrupted by sudden faults or abrupt inter-
minglings which no clue that we can find
enables us either to separate or unite, a
chronology in perfect disorder, sometimes,
by reason of its overlappings, running up to a
pretentious and impossible antiquity, again,
by reason of some vivid impression it had
made, bringing some very ancient event
away down into the very foreground of these
mythical groupings. And so of all the early
stories given by Herodotus, as derived by
him from the priests, and poets, and popular
traditions of the various nations that he
visited. The very cloudiness that surrounds
them, the disproportions of arrangement, the
predominance of the fanciful obscuring and
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 215
sometimes putting beyond all recovery the
idea or historical fact they might be sup
posed to represent, the legendary features
every where prevailing, the manifest air of
the marvellous and the extraordinary unre
lieved by pictures of the common and
familiar life, the unmistakable aim of the
chronicler or traditionist to call atten
tion to the mere wonder whilst casting
in the back-ground the moral or religious
lesson whose prominence in the Jewish
i{ myths" gives the supernatural the subordi
nate place, and thus, as we have shown be
fore, imparts to it its air of strange and
almost supernatural credibility, all these
things, as we find them in the earliest ac
counts of other nations, are just as we ex
pect. There is just that misty, magnifying,
distorting, wonder-making, legendary, myth
ical air, confounding all chronology, and all
geography, that absence of dates, that con
fusion of places, that blending of events far
distant from each other in time and space,
216 THE DIVINE HUMAN
which show the want of all attesting means
of knowledge, whilst they bear witness to
the fertile imaginations, the excited feelings,
in fact, the subjective truthfulness of these
mythical story-tellers, as it appears in the
very disproportions and exaggerations of
their narratives. Instead of having any
accurate chronicles of years, these koyoyqayoi,
do not even make any pretence to it ; they
would seem to have regarded any such pre
cision of places and times as at war with
that feeling of the wonderful that filled their
minds, and which dwells chiefly in the vast
and the obscure.
Such is all ancient mythical history, and
we are not surprised to find it so. Nothing
but some supernatural knowledge and super
natural guidance could have made it other
wise. But such is not the scripture history,
either in its earliest or latest stages, and
whether we regard its narratives as traditions
or as having been the subjects of recording
at the time of occurerice. The moment
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 217
we open these "Jewish myths, 77 so called,
there is discovered a most remarkable dif
ference lying patent on every page. This
peculiarity, so obvious to the least re
flecting reader, is what may be called the
statistical character of the Scripture Chroni
cles. The Bible is a Book of Numbers. It
is a trait maintained consistently through
out. From the exact nativities of the
Antediluvian ages, from the precise dates
of the rising and subsiding waters of the
flood, from Noah s almanac, as we may
say, down to Haggai s diary, or careful
noting of the very year, and month, and
day of the month, in which the word of the
Lord came unto him, it is all of a piece, one
consistent number- giving, time-keeping rec
ord. The Jews, if there is any truth in
their history at all, were a journalizing
people, a genealogizing people ; the Bible is
their family book of entries, just as we now
employ certain pages of it as a register of
births and deaths. Precise statistics are
10
218 THE DIVINE HUMAN
every where, and every where purporting
to be from men who knew, and who are, in
the main, supposed to be recording known
present or passing facts. There is nothing
like it in the history of any other people on
earth ; certainly not in any early history.
All the way up to the flood, with a few gaps
which seem to have been left designedly to
baffle human curiosity, there is a regular
chronological track.
Now let any one compare the first volume
of Grote s History of Greece with the Pen
tateuch, the confused and utterly unchrono-
logical annals of the Doric, Hellenic, and
Eolic races, with even the earliest part of
the Mosaic writings, or the history of the
Patriarchs, and he will see at once the differ
ence on which, in view of its most important
consequences, we are so strongly insisting.
Darkness, confusion, shadows, deformities,
painful perplexities, or hopeless riddles, in
the one, the clear geography, the direct
chronology, the fact consistency, the life-like
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 219
minuteness of coloring, the strange combina
tion of the marvellous in such perfect affinity
with the familiar and the domestic that it
loses its marvel, all this in the other.
Even after the commencement of what is
called the " historical period," or the intro
duction of the Olympiads, the Grecian
chronology is full of obscurities. It is not
easy to fix the times of the historians them
selves ; there is a doubt about Herodotus ;
the Heraclidae and Lycurgus fail of being
precisely determined by some centuries ; but
more than a thousand years before Herod
otus, the Hebrew writings set forth a regu
lar chronology. Before Hellenians and Dori
ans had set foot in Greece, many centuries
before even the Pelasgi " were in the land/ 7
we are told the time of life, and have the
means of reckoning the very year, when
Abraham went forth from Ur of the Chal-
dees. No, there is no escape from it : the
Jewish history is the boldest of lies, the
most unscrupulous of forgeries, and, at the
220 THE DIVINE HUMAN.
same time, the most inexplicable of literary
enigmas, or it is the truth, attested inwardly
and confirmed outwardly, as no other ancient
historical account was ever attested in the
multiplied annals of the race .
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED STATISTICAL CHARACTER OF THE
SCRIPTURES The Antediluvian Genealogies The First
Obituaries The Dates and Numbers of the Deluge Its
Graphic Description The Gradual Rising The Scene Pic
tured by an Eye- Witness The Minutely Inventive Style be
longs to Much Later T.mes The Most Truthful of Narratives
or the Most Monstrous of Lies Subjective Truthfulness The
Jewish Year Its Early and Remarkable Accuracy More
Acurate than the Greek or Roman The Weekly Division of
Time Purely Shemitic in its Origin.
IN the very beginning of Genesis, in the
very frontispiece, we may say, of the whole
Scriptures, we find this statistical character.
"And Adam lived an hundred and thirty
years, and begat a son in his own likeness,
after his image, and called his name Seth ;
and all the days that Adam lived were nine
hundred and thirty years, and he died.
And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and
begat Methusaleh ; and Methusaleh lived an
222 THE DIVINE HUMAN
hundred and eighty and seven years, and
begat Lamech ; and Methusaleh lived after
he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and
two years, and begat sons and daughters ;
and all the days of Methusaleh were nine
hundred and sixty and nine years, and he
died." And so on through the births and
deaths of this old Antediluvian Patriarchy.
There is, too, a moral lesson here, impressive
and sad, and giving to these dry numbers
a sublime moral dignity. It is not ob
trusive, indeed ; it is not suspiciously forced
upon the notice ; to the dull reader these
details and repetitions may seem as barren
as the fragment of Berosus, which is evi
dently an imitation of this older document ;
but to the man whose spirit is awake, it
is the solemn record of execution on the
great judgment pronounced in a previous
chapter ; it is the commencement of that
long death which our humanity has been
dying ever since. It is the first great obitu
ary, recorded, not on blank, intervening
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 223
leaves, but " in capite libri" in the beginning
of " the volume of the book." It is the title-
page to that true history of the world, writ
ten on the tombs, and preserved where all
else perishes, even in the dust of the earth.
There is the same character, though car
ried to a still farther degree of graphic
minuteness, in the account of the Deluge.
We have the exact year, the month, the day
of the month, when the great rain commenc
ed upon the earth, and Noah went into the
ark. Were ever the pictorial and the
statistical combined in so life-like a de
scription ?
" On the self-same day entered Noah,
and Shem, and Ham, and Japhet, the sons
of Noah, and Noah s wife, and the three
wives of his sons with them, into the ark ;
and the flood was forty days upon the
earth ; and the waters increased and bare
up the ark, and it was lift up from the
ground ; and the waters prevailed and were
increased greatly upon the earth, and the
224 THE DIVINE HUMAN
ark went (^tn walked forth,
upon the face of the waters ; and the waters
prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and
all the high hills that were under the whole
horizon were covered j fifteen cubits up
wards did the waters prevail after the moun
tains (or the highest hills) were covered.
And all flesh died that moved upon the
earth ; and Noah only remained alive and
they that were with him in the ark ; and
the waters prevailed upon the earth an hun
dred and fifty days." Surely the man who
first painted this scene must have been in
that ark when it was " lifted up," and went
walking forth upon the waters ; he must
have been an eye-witness of that irresistibly
rising wave, those disappearing hills, all
ending at last in that sky-bounded waste.
" Under the whole heaven"- who that has
any true love or reverence for the Bible,
would raise an argument, on these words,
either for or against the absolute universal
ity of the deluge, or think of interpreting
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 225
the writer at all by either our modern ge
ography or our modem astronomy ! It was
all of earth he knew, or that was known to
Moses after him. The divine Spirit that
employed his vivid conception, as well as
his vivid language, has given it to us as the
measure and the assurance of his truthful
ness. The absolute geographical extent is
to be determined by other proofs and other
passages. But here we have that which
filled the writer s eye ; it was the optical
carried out to the fullest extent of the known
or the imagined ; and it is just that truthful
ness which, in such an account as this, is of
the highest critical value. He who deals
with it in any other way, ruins one of the
most precious evidences of the Scriptures.
It will bear no scientific reconciliation ; it
utterly rejects the aid of any rhetorical
addition. We may be chargeable ourselves,
to some extent, with the very fault here im
puted ; still are we deeply conscious that
any attempt to put the account in other
10*
226 THE DIVINE HUMAN
language than that of this eye-witness, and
especially as it lies in the inimitable Hebrew,
only mars the picture. They are the words
of that high emotion, that calm emotion, we
might say, that could not bear exaggeration ;
it is the utterance of that clear spiritual im
pression that shapes its own first language,
never to be improved by any other.
In perfect keeping, too, is the account of
the subsiding flood. Let the infidel look up
his favorite story of Deucalion and Pyrrha,
and see, if he is capable of seeing, the mighty
difference ; let the rationalist read over again
his Hindoo myths of the deluge, and be ut
terly ashamed of his comparisons. " And
God remembered Noah, and every living
thing, and all the cattle that was with him in
the ark ; and God made a wind to pass over
the earth, and the waters assuaged ; the foun
tains also of the deep and the windows of
heaven were stopped, and the rain from heav
en was restrained ; and the waters returned
from off the earth continually; and after the
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 227
end of the hundred and fifty days the waters
abated." Returned continually, "awi "rftn to
go and return," " going and returning ;" such
is the expressive idiom of the Hebrew ; it is
most pictorial language, and denotes a sort
of ebbing subsidence having its intervals of
standing and sinking until it reaches the low
est and settled state. " And the ark rested
in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day
of the month, upon the highlands of Ararat ;
And the waters kept going and retiring ^n,
-nom ibant et decrescebant , until the tenth
month : in the tenth month on the first day
of the month were the tops of the mountains
seen," apparuerunt cacumina montium. The
utmost intention of plainness and simplicity
cannot prevent the language from rising into
the poetical. "And it came to pass at the
end of forty days that Noah opened the window
of the ark ; and he sent forth a raven which
went to and fro (Heb. going out and returning,
or, back and forth) until the waters were dried
up from off the earth. Also, he sent forth a
228 THE DIVINE HUMAN
dove from him to see if the waters were
abated ; but the dove found no rest for the
sole of her foot, and she returned unto him
in the ark, for the waters were on the face of
the whole earth ; then he put forth his hand
and took her, and pulled her in unto him
into the ark ; and he staid yet other seven
days, and again lie sent forth the dove out
of the ark ; and the dove came in to him
in the evening, and lo, in her mouth was an
olive leaf plucked off ; and Noah knew that
the waters were abated from off the earth ;
and he staid yet other seven days, and sent
forth the dove which returned not again unto
him any more. And it came to pass in the
six hundredth and first year, in the first
month, the first day of the month, the waters
were dried up from off the earth : and JSToah
removed the covering of the ark, and looked,
and, behold, the face of the ground was dry ;
and on the second month, on the seven and
twentieth day of the month, was the earth
dried. 7
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 229
How can any serious soul fail to be struck
with this strange combination of the minutely
familiar and the inexpressibly sublime ? To
think of a man s deliberately sitting down
thus consciously to forge all this numerical
exactness, and yet preserving that other aw
ful feature so inconsistent with the meanness
and littleness of known and intended lying !
For such, if it be not strictly true, must have
been the character of this account when first
written, unless thus filled in by our supposed
compilers. A wilful forger, earlier or later,
could not have so described it ; he must have
betrayed the un truthfulness of his position.
A mere wonder-making traditionist could not
have given us the story in a manner so differ
ent from that of the early Greek logographer,
or Hindoo mythopceist ; the legendary would
have manifested itself ; for that art o/ fictitious
writing, which could alone have kept back
its untruthful aspect, was not invented until
ages after, and has only in the latest times
arrived at its perfection. Yet nothing in the
230 THE DIVINE HUMAN
most modern times, whether fictitious or real,
could surpass it in this air of simple verity.
We cannot avoid being struck with the un
pretending calmness, the simple majesty, the
utter absence of the swelling, the pretentious,
the wonder-showing, in a narrative that re
lates such marvels. An account in one of our
newspapers of an inundation of the Missis
sippi shall have ten times the air of hyper
bole, shall go utterly beyond it in all those
turgid features of narration which betray on
the part of the writer the feeling that he has
something very great to tell, and an evident
delight in making his readers share in the
same emotion. For a truthful man, thus
perusing the account of the flood, it is diffi
cult to divest the mind, at least for the mo
ment, of the idea of the substantial subjective
truthfulness of the story itself. We mean by
this, its perfect honesty as reflecting the hon
esty of the first narrator, however defective
he might be in science, or however mistaken
in regard both to the natural and super natu-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 231
ral causality. He narrates things as he saw
them and felt them ; he gives us truly the
appearances and the emotions, the latter not
as subjects of introverted description, but as
exhibited in the style and language called
out by the phenomena. This is enough for
our present argument ; when it is complete
and carried throughout the Bible, then let
any one resist the impression of the super
natural, if he finds it easy to do so. But in
reading this story, so simply yet so grandly
told, we are impressed, as by a real passing
scene, with the belief that there actually was
such a man as Noah in the early world, a
very righteous, honest man, who had on his
mind, whether deceived in his idea of inspi
ration or not, a real conviction that there
was coming such a flood of waters over the
whole known land, that, under the influence
of this belief, he built a vessel, that he took
into it his family and the known animals of
the surrounding country, that in all this he
religiously regarded himself as prompted by
232 THE DIVINE HUMAN
a divine power, that the waters did come,
that they rose gradually as is so graphically
described, that they as gradually abated, that
he sent forth the dove, that she returned
with an olive leaf in the evening as is so touch-
ingly told, that he " put forth his hand and
took her and pulled her in unto him in the
ark, 7 that " he waited other seven days," and
finally came forth from the ark on that very
month, and day of the month, of which he
had made so careful a register for those who
were preserved with him, and for the sake
of those who should be after him upon the
earth. How monstrous the lie if it be not
the honest truth ! We mean not, how mon
strously false in its marvellous, but in its
minute dates and details, in those circum
stantial lies that must have been all along
accompanied with such a consciousness of
falsehood on the part of the narrator. The
marvellous might have grown from some
traditionary small beginning, and the first
writer been very honest in his belief of it :
IN THE SCRIPTUKES. 233
we can easily understand that : it would be
no impeachment of the logographer s truthful
ness, but rather a proof of it, had he allowed
the wonderful to make some increase of mag
nitude in his own mind, and thus been led
to bring into the narrative rather more of the
supernatural than it possessed when it came
to him. Such a natural growth is easy to be
conceived ; but the other idea is quite incred
ible, we mean, except on the supposition
of its being an absolute and entire forgery,
where invention becomes natural and predom
inant. Traditionists, or the chroniclers of
traditions, do not thus conspire. They may
enlarge, but they do not thus minutely fill
up ; for the very consciousness of what they
are doing must destroy their belief in the
story, and take away from them that charac
ter of subjective truthfulness which the sup
position demands. The human inventive
faculty may, indeed, go a great way, but it
is not employed in such a manner, and from
such a motive. Its end is amusement, some-
234 THE DIVINE HUMAN
times, the exhibition of its power, or there
is some collateral purpose which cannot be
conceived of in such a case as this. The
minutely inventive fictitious style of writing
is an art of slow growth. From such clumsy
beginnings as we find in the earliest efforts,
more unnatural in fact than the wild mythi
cal legends that aim at no such character,
they require ages to bring them to that easy
finish which is now sought for in this kind
of composition. In fact, the Defoe style
belongs to the very latest period of the world s
literature, it is a species of Flemish painting
that comes after the great old masters ; it is an
introversion of human powers seeking a new
occupation when the sublimely truthful, or
the simple in history, as well as the sublimely
marvellous, had ceased to charm. The sup
position that it existed in the days of Moses,
or for a thousand years after Moses, is more
incredible than any thing for which it may
be brought to account. It is utterly incon
sistent with any feeling, or motive, or state
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 235
of mind, that we can imagine for those early
days. It must have a consciousness of false
hood staring it in the face with every unit,
and ten, and hundred, it employs, and this
debasing effect is directly at war with those
sublime religious conceptions, whether true
or false, that are mingled with it.
Every reader of the Bible must be familiar
with the great number of other examples
that might be given of this same statistical
character. There is the Jewish year, pre
senting quite a question for the learned, if
they will but carefully look at it. The
adjustment of the current annual time had
a difficulty for the early days, of which we
can form some conception when we bear
in mind that our familiar almanac knowl
edge has been, in fact, the growth of cen
turies. But this unscientific people seem to
have settled this problem, at least for all
practical approximations, or to have had it
settled for them, even before the Exodus.
Ever after, the calendar of their months and
236 THE DIVINE HUMAN
festal seasons seems to have had almost the
modern accuracy, while the Greek and Ro
man year remained for centuries later in
great confusion, and the Egyptian, if we
may judge from what is said by Herodotus,
was hardly in any better state. The inter
calation of five days, the b^ot method then
known, must have produced a disorder of
nearly a month in a century. The Israelites
had certainly some better way. The learn
ed Arabian Makrizi, who goes very fully
into the matter, gives us an account of the
methods employed by the later Rabbins, but
these could not have produced the remark
able accuracy that must have existed in their
festival-keeping before the captivity. A
mere observation of the new moons would
not have kept their time from floating if
there had not been some method of fixing
the solar year, whether from astronomical
means, or some unerring signs of vegetation.
If this calendar accuracy, as we may call
it, had stood out by itself, an isolated
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 237
characteristic, there might be some plausi
bility in regarding it as a forgery of a later
age. But it is in keeping with the whole
style of the Jewish records. It is in har
mony with the genealogical, festival- observ
ing, census-taking character of the nation,
from the days when Jacob and his seventy
descendants went down into Egypt, until
the time when the families were numbered
on their return from Babylon. The antiquity
of all their public days stands or falls with
it. There is no place where we can stop and
say, here ceases the mythical, the unchrono-
logical, and here the chronological com
mences. From the beginning, from the
first intimation of a weekly division of time,
from the first mention of a Sabbath, and its
subsequent recognition in the heart of the
national code, it is all of a piece. Creation
is recorded diurnally and chronologically,
whether we suppose it to be on the greater
or the lesser scale of the world-times. One
great earthly use assigned in the appoint-
238 THE DIVINE HUMAN.
ment of the celestial luminaries is, that
"they may be for signs, * and for days, and
for years. 7 Besides the general divisions of
time produced by the sun and moon, and
which were employed, with more or less
accuracy, by all nations, the weekly division
is acknowledged to have been purely Shemitic
in its origin. It is so admitted by Humboldt
in his Kosmos. The hebdomadal period,
though there are intimations of it in other
ancient writings, is found in the Bible as in
its native place. They^is accompanied by
its reason, and both are treated as well
known from the beginning. In the event
there recorded it had its origin, and as there
is nothing astronomical in its character, there
could have been no other foundation for
such a division than the early knowledge or
announcement of the great fact with which
the Scriptures connect it.
* Gen. 1 : 14, tjt| signs marked periods epochs.
C H A P T E K XIV.
THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED PROPER NAMES The Jews a Cen
sus-taking People Their Minute Ritual The Offerings of
the Heads of Tribes, Numbers VII. r lhe Legal or Documen
tary Style of the Record Why this Style, in all Languages,
tends to Prolixity A Solemn Memorial Wherein it differs
from the Style both of Legend and of History Significance of
the Names mentioned, Numbers VII. Great Number of Prop
er Names in the Bible Surpassing those of our Classical
Dictionaries Their Significance a Sign of the National Charac
ter Compared with the Proper K ames of the Greek Both
Significant, but in how different a Way ! The one mainly
Warlike, the other mainly Religious Compounded with the
Divine Names Jah and El Include so generally the Ideas of
Promise, Covenant and Election They ever remind the
Bearers of the Early Patriarchal Times and the National Seclusion
- Named after God Argument from Numbers VII. The
Religious and Spiritual Character of the Days of the Bondage
Geographical Accuracy Knowledge on the Spot, Knowledge
at the Time.
IN no other people of antiquity, if we except
the later Romans, is there anything like that
exact census-taking which distinguishes the
Jewish chronicles, that enrolling, not of
individuals only, but of ages, and classes,
and tribes, and families, and priesthoods,
240 THE DIVINE HUMAN
and Levitical services, those exact inven
tories of all things required in the ritual and
festal worship. Along with this, there is
something well calculated to arrest our at
tention in the proper names of persons, so
astonishing in their number and their signifi
cance. Has the reader ever thought how
many more such names are to be found in
this compressed history than in all the
poetry and history of classical antiquity !
Their strange meanings, too ! It is not the
mere fact of their having a meaning that is
wonderful, for this has been the case more
or less among all people ; it is the peculiar
aspect of their significance, so deeply relig
ious, so intimately and almost universally
associated with the divine names and divine
things. For an illustration of this census
character, as exhibited in almost all the
particulars here mentioned, we might take
the Seventh chapter of Numbers. Let any
one study it carefully as it lies among its
contexts, and reconcile it if he can with the
IX THE SCRIPTURES. 241
theory of its having been made seven hun
dred years after the professed times, whether
as a document entirely new, or as a tradition
ary compilation. After the long and ex
ceedingly minute accounts of the tabernacle
and its furniture, the ark, the altar, the
sacrifice, with all the institutions of Jewish
worship, we have what may be called the
solemn national and tribal inauguration of
the whole service. Each head of a tribe,
his name given and that of his father, just
as we find these same names in their genea
logical records elsewhere preserved, brings
his representative offering of silver and gold
and sacrificial animals, all precisely enumer
ated, with the measures and values of each.
"And the Princes offered for dedicating of
the altar in the day that it was anointed,
even the Princes offered their offering before
the altar. And the Lord said unto Moses,
they shall offer their offering, each Prince on
his day, for the dedicating of the altar. And
he that offered his offering the first day was
11
24:2 THE DIVINE HUMAN
Nahshon the son of Amminadab of the tribe
of Judah : and his offering was one silver
charger, the weight thereof was one hundred
and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy
shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary ;
both of them were full of fine flour mingled
with oil for a meat offering : one spoon of
ten shekels of gold full of incense ; one
young bullock, one ram, one lamb of the
first year for a burnt offering ; one kid of
the goats for a sin offering : and for a sacri
fice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams,
five he goats, five lambs of the first year :
this was the offering of Nahshon the son of
Amminadab. On the second day Nethaneel
the son of Zuar Prince of Issachar did offer,"
&c. In this very peculiar document, the
very same language, with merely a diversity
of the proper names that fill the intervals,
is repeated twelve times without abbreviation
or any attempt at compression. It might be
thought a very tedious paper were it not
for the ideas it suggests to the thoughtful
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 243
reader. It has the diction of a solemn
memorial. Yiewed in that light there is a
reason in the repetition. It is that demand
of emphasis which among all nations, ancient
or modern, has given an air of prolixity to
the law style, as we call it, or documental
language. We see something of it in the
verbal covenanting of earlier times, as be
tween Abraham and Abimelech, and Abraham
and the sons of Heth in the purchase of Mac-
phelah. Here it becomes very striking. In
stead of all these precisely similar statements
being thrown together with a general cap
tion, or all the later ones referred to the
first, which would have been as clear, one
would think, and much more convenient,
each stands separate and full, so that each
tribe, and the descendants of each tribe, may
see their ancestor s name written out dis
tinctly, with his precise offering, the number,
measure, and value, all put down by itself,
as though he were the principal name, as he
is to them the most interesting name, in all
244 THE DIVINE HUMAN
the roll. Now even aside from all this ap
pearance of circumstantiality, no one could
regard it as a tradition handed down in
memory, or made, wholly or partially, so
many centuries after. It would have had,
in the one case, the style of legend, in the
other, that of history ; and both these are
different from that of memorial or attestation.
If it is impossible to regard it as a forgery,
then let one try the other idea of its being a
tradition, so precise a thing coming down
with all its names and measures, and its ex
act order preserved for centuries. If he
finds this too hard of belief, then let him
take this Seventh of Numbers, and, viewing
it as a true memorial, made at the time, let
him study it carefully in its connections be
fore and after, and see how much he is com
pelled to take with it, in other words, how
much throughout the Pentateuch must be
held as genuine, if this is genuine, how much
of all those other books, away back to Gen
esis, must be taken as a studied preparation,
IN THE SCRIPTUKES. 245
all made to suit, in fact, if this be a forgery,
and then how some of these other passages
necessitate still the same thought in respect
to others, and so on, throughout these strange
writings so fragmentary in some of their ap
pearances and yet found to be, on closer ex
amination, so wondrously coherent. If this
document is a reality, made at the time, then
is the preparatory work and ritual all a re
ality, then is that wilderness life a reality,
then is that solemn law-giving a reality, Sinai
is a reality, and so is the Exodus, and the
bondage, for they are all commemorated here
or in the closely-connected antecedents ; and
then Moses is a reality, and Joseph, and the
Fathers ; then, above all, are the old prom
ises a reality, and the "Covenant" a re
ality, for they pervade every part as the
meaning and life of the whole. Let the
reader think, too, what an immense amount
of statistical fact must have been carried
down floating in the memory if this were
so carried down, and how different that
24(5 THE DIVINE HUMAN
Jewish memory must have been from the
magnifying, coloring, myth-making memory
of all other ancient nations. Let any one
thus study the passage in connection with
these ideas, and he will find, we think, that
there is but one conceivable solution of the
problem.
We cannot pass over this chapter without
dwelling briefly on some striking thoughts
presented by its proper names. To set them
in their strongest light we give them in the
original and with their translations, though
of the latter it must be said that we can only
be certain of the two fundamental ideas that
enter into each name, the manner of connect
ing them being that about which philologists
may differ. Thus Eliab has the two ideas,
God and father ; but we cannot certainly
decide whether the significance intended
was " God my Father" or " God of my fa
ther" Almost every name in this list has a
clear meaning. There is first, of the tribe
of
IN THE SCRIPTURES.
247
Judah,
Issachar,
Zebulon,
Reuben,
Simeon,
Gad,
Ephraim
Nahshon, Blessed Omen,
son of
Amminadab, The
Princely :
Netlianeel, God hath
given, son of
Zuar, The Little One,
the Lowly :
Eliab, God my Father :
Elizur, God my Rock,
son of
Shedeur, the Almighty
my Light :
Shelumiel, God my
Peace, son of
Zurishaddai, The Al
mighty my Rock :
Eliasaph, God will in
crease, son of
Deuel, Calling on God :
Elishama, My God will
hear, son of
Ammihud, My People.
Glory :
248 THE DIVINE HUMAN
Manasseh, bapbaa Gamliel, God will rec
ompense, son of
mrns Pedahzur, Rock Re
demption :
Asher, baws Pageel, God Interces
sion, son of
1?^ Okran, Trouble or Sor
row.
What a religious aspect do they possess !
Bad men may have godly names ; bad parents
may give their children godly names; but
their general prevalence does prove that not
many generations back there must have been
a somewhat generally diffused spirit of piety,
or some strongly theistic national ideas, to
account for them. So among the Greeks,
cowards may have had warlike titles, but the
general prevalence of corresponding appella
tions is very rationally taken as a proof, if
there were no other, that the Athenians were
a military and naval people. What then is
the just inference from the Jewish names
as compared with the Greek arid Roman?
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 249
What is the real historical significance of their
deeply religious character, their strong the-
istic, or rather monotheistic aspect, their
continual expression of faith and hope, their
so frequent allusions to the ideas of covenant
and redemption ? The hypothesis of the ra
tionalist utterly fails here ; his data are alto
gether too narrow to account for the strange
difference in this apparently so simple a mat
ter of naming. And why too, we may ask,
do so many of these appellations end in El
and Jah, ever calling up the two great divine
names with their most holy ideas ? Let the
reader ponder well the fact, and see if he can
find any other reason for this national seal,
this naming after the Lord, as we may call
it, than the great all-explaining fact that
they were, indeed, " a chosen people," an
"elect people, whom, for high and world
wide reasons, God had taken as his own
"when he separated the sons of Adam and
gave the nations their inheritance. 7
The heads of tribes mentioned Numbers
11*
250 THE DIVINE HUMAN
vii., must have been born in the days of the
bondage. Now we generally associate with
that period the ideas of religious or spiritual
decline. They are thought to have been a
vile, ungrateful, murmuring people, who had
forgotten, or had never known, their ances
tral history, and how very religious it was.
But here is a little beam of light thrown back
upon that dark passage in chronology. In
the later days of the bondage they may have
become, indeed, debased. Such would be a
natural effect of their servile condition. But
in the times that followed the death of Joseph,
there may have been, there probably was,
much religious feeling among them. This
style of naming points to such a period.
Jehovah my Light, the Redeemer my Rock,
God the Intercessor, or He who intervenes for
relief in the day of trouble, the Gift of God,
the Son of the Lowly : Such appellations
might have become matters of formality, as
is doubtless the case often with names that
have come down from a Puritan ancestry, but
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 251
they had their origin in the spirit and re
membrance of the old never to be forgotten
promises. There is faith in them somewhere,
such faith as Paul sets forth in his long list,
Heb. xi., such faith as was counted " to them
for righteousness. 77 They are connected, we
say, with the divine appellations as seals of
the national "covenant," as a standing me
morial, handed down from generation to
generation, that " this was the people whose
God, 7; whose El or Mighty One, " was Jeho
vah. 77 They came from men who remem
bered the Preserver of Joseph, who had
heard of the visits of Angels, the dream of
Bethel, the Hope of Jacob, the Fear of Isaac,
the Faith of Abraham, the God of the Cove
nant, who had been their fathers 7 God, and
who had given them those glorious promises,
uneffaceable by the bondage of generations,
that in them and their seed all the nations
of the earth were to be blessed. Such must
have been their source. Or will the " ration
alist " rather seek the ground of these ideas,
252 THE DIVINE HUMAN
so pure and holy, so full of hope, of simple
yet majestic faith, in the monstrous symbol
ism of old Egypt ? "Were they seminated in
that same Nilotic bed so prolific even then
in those physical and spiritual deformities
which reached the consummation of all im
purity in the unclean worship of Osiris and
the dog Anubis ?
There is the same peculiarity in the names
of places, in the statement of distances and
directions. If it be all a compilation, how
vast must have been the knowledge of these
compilers ! The strictest research of modern
times, had they enjoyed the benefit, could
not have given them an ethnological and
geographical accuracy so perfect that the
most learned criticism fails to detect a mis
nomer or an anachronism. It could not be
so, unless it were taken from the life. It is
knowledge on the spot, knowledge at the time,
and yet, in some cases, showing such a his
torical relation, not simply to later, but to
the latest times, even to our time, and times
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 253
beyond it, that it must have been the dual
work of an eye-witness writing for the then
present, yet guided by a higher mind that
looked far down into the remotest future.
There is a peculiar clearness in the giving of
marked chronological periods, whose impor
tance, though simply Jewish at the time, is
now seen to be so closely connected with the
general chronology of all history. Thus we
have the precise date of the building of Sol
omon s Temple, and the interval between it
and the Exodus ! It comes in most naturally,
and in strictest keeping with the solemnity
of the transaction. Doubtless there had been
a most thorough examination, for that pur-
pose, of all known records, and of those
tribal and family genealogies in the keeping
of which the whole history of the Jews shows
them to have been so exact. But this date,
though so strictly national, becomes an epoch
from which the history of the world looks
both back and forward ; whilst from its con
nection with Tyre, and the reign of Hiram,
254 THE DIVINE HUMAN.
it becomes also one of the noteworthy side
points from which we connect the separate
and secluded Jewish, with the world s chro
nology.
CHAPTER XV.
ARGUMENT FROM THE NATURAL CONTINUED THE BOLDEST OF FOR
GERIES, OR WHOLLY TRUE Illustrations from the Prophets
Isaiah s Vision, " in the year that King Uzziah died " Natural
ness of this Mnemonic Date "Why the Prophet should remem
ber it Peculiar History of Uzziah, the Leper King Dates of
the Prophetic Visions The Day, the Month, and the Year
Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Argument from these Facts The
Wholesale Forgery easier of Belief than this minute Filling up
Would betray a Consciousness of Falsehood inconsistent with
any subjective Truthfulness Driven to the First Hypothesis
Comparison with Homer The Homeric Truthfulness Why
does it not also prove the Homeric Supernatural Difference
between the Homeric and the Bible Supernatural Parallel be
tween the Greeks and Jews What necessary to make it com
plete The Greek Zeus and the Hebrew Jehovah The Greek
Idea of Fate, and the Jewish Ideas of Covenant and Election
The Greek Oracles, the Hebrew Messiah The Hebrews a
World-nation, The Greeks had no World-idea.
FURTHER illustrations of this statistical char
acter we find in the reigns of the Kings, and
in the dates of remarkable events as referred
to some striking time or fact in those reigns ;
the truthful impression being, in most cases,
made stronger by the informal and inciden-
25(&gt; THE J)IVINE HUMAN
tal manner of their introduction. In dry
history this style of reference, or incidental
date-giving, would not so much surprise us ;
but we meet with it in the very visions of the
Prophets. "In the year that King Uzziah
died," says Isaiah, "I saw the Lord sitting
upon a throne high and lifted up, and his
train filled the temple. Above it stood the
seraphim, and they cried, one to the other,
saying Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts,
the whole earth is full of his glory." Let any
one have his mind impressed as it ought to
be impressed with this seraphic glory ; let
him think of the high state of soul necessary
even for the conception of such a vision with
its air of ineffable holiness, and then, if he can,
connect it, and its inseparable associations,
with that meanest of all falsehood, the petty
circumstantial lie. But take away this re
volting thought (though necessary to the idea
of a mere filled up compilation) and every
thing lies before us in grand consistency.
The date mentioned is the last one that would
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 257
have been selected by a forger, or guessed by
a compiler, to give a mnemonic importance to
any incident ; but to Isaiah himself it had a
mournful interest. " It was in the year that
King Uzziah died/ that old leper-stricken
king, who had so long u lived in a separate
house, 7 where, "free among the dead," he
had poured forth his sorrows in that mournful
88th Psalm so strikingly descriptive of his sad
condition. ( 8 ) His passing away, at last, would
be a much more eventful remembrance to
the Prophet than to the nation at large ;
for lie had long been civilly dead. Dur
ing the latter part of his long reign of fifty
and two years, he was entirely cut off
from public business, and " Jotham his son
was Regent over the king s house, judging
the people of the land." The superseded
father must have been nearly forgotten by
the multitude, and his death and hasty un
royal burial could have made but little im
pression upon their minds. But Isaiah had
been his counsellor, sometimes his reprover ;
258 THE DIVINE HUMAN
he had written the history of his earlier active
life. He had thought much of the old mon
arch, of his better days, when " he sought
the Lord and God made him to prosper,"
of his more peaceful days, " when he digged
wells, and had cattle in the low country, and
vine-dressers upon the mountains, for he loved
husbandry," of his grand, warlike days,
when he fought with the Philistines, and
brake down the wall of Gath, and strength
ened Jerusalem with towers, and srnote the
Arabians that dwelt in Gur-baal, and built
Eloth, and spread his name and power even
to the entering in of Egypt." He had often
pictured, if he could not visit, him in his lone
leper-house ; he called to mind that offence
against the divine ceremonial holiness for
which he had been smitten with unapproach
able impurity ; and it was in the year so well
remembered from all these sad and humbling
associations, the year when this old forgotten
monarch " slept," at last, " with his fathers,"
that Isaiah had that vision of ineffable holi-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 259
ness, too bright for impure eyes to see, for
11 unclean lips to tell." The vision is a reality;
that is, the Prophet did see the Throne, the
Glory, and the burning Seraphim, whether
it were from a divine afflatus or his own in
ward rapt enthusiasm. We are not afraid
thus to state the case, because deeply con
vinced that one who can thus receive fully
the subjective, will find himself unable to
resist the belief of the absolute truthfulness.
The vision is a reality ; the Prophet is a
reality, and then the dying king is a reality ;
Uzziah s reign is a reality, and then that
which made it what it was, even the reign
of " Amaziah his father, whose mother s name
was Jehoaddan of Jerusalem," that, too, was
a reality, and the reign before it was a reality,
and so on. For there is no place where we can
stop, until we find the consistency of all sub
sequent Jewish history, the seminal elements
of its strength and weakness, in the reigns
of David and Saul, and the events of those
times all prepared by the events before them,
260 THE DIVINE HUMAN
and so on, until we come up to the recorded
life of him who first wrote in his book, or
received from older books, that " in the be
ginning God created the Heavens and the
earth."
And so is it with the Prophets throughout.
They keep a diary of their visions, and if it
is false, it is far more false, more incredibly
false, than either their rapt subjective states
or their wild harangues. Jeremiah and Eze-
kiel manifest this trait more strikingly than
Isaiah. Everywhere do these seers record
the dates, the year, the month, the day of
the month, the attending chronological cir
cumstances of the burthens and messages
with which as they allege they have been
commissioned by the Lord. If these dates
are put in by themselves, then is it all, sub
jectively, one harmonious consistent picture
of life. If supposed to be put in by com
pilers, long after the times of the prophetic
visions, then there is no reason for it, no
meaning in it. It is not only incredible but
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 261
absurd. It destroys its own credit, and the
credit of that which it would attest. It is
an easier theory that every word of the Pro
phetic writings had been forged. If that is
incredible, then this is most incredible. There
is but one other supposition : the dates and
the visions are from the same persons, and
these are the prophets themselves writing
and speaking at the times they profess to
write and speak, and in relation to actual
existing events that form the subjects of their
warning. The seers, the times, the nation,
the national life, it is all one true picture,
in its parts, most truthful and natural, in its
whole, suggestive of an extraordinary and
difficult problem. Let any man attempt to
explain its natural without bringing in its
supernatural, or some other supernatural
if he can.
Either of these suppositions, except the
first, tries our credulity to its utmost strain.
To suppose that this amount of statistical
statement, from Seth to Malachi, all came
262 THE DIVINE HUMAN
from tradition alone, and was carried down
by tradition, or was ever assumed to have
been so carried, or that all these numbers,
round and mixed, these dates, these minute
coincidences of events, this immense body
of proper names, surpassing, we think, all
that are to be found in classical dictionaries,
these countless genealogies, were all carried
in the popular or the individual memory until
the later times of the Jewish history, this
is beyond all belief. Equally incredible,
more incredible, we think, that they should
have been put in by late compilers as the
arbitrary or conjectural filling up of outline
historical events traditionally received.
The wholesale forgery is the easier of be
lief, the forgery in which the great facts as
well as the minutest statistics are all sup
posed to be mere creations of the imagina
tion. There is, too, less wrong to conscience.
A man must feel less guilty in producing a
whole and continuous work of fiction, than in
thus tampering with, and perverting, what
IN THE SCKIPTUKES. 263
is supposed to be true ; if it can be supposed
to be true by one who could thus deliberately
deal with it. There must be felt to be in this
circumstantial falsehood, thus thrust into a
traditionary outline, a crime and a meanness
that does not attach to the bolder work.
Hence, viewing it as myths, or detached na
tional stories thus falsely filled up, we cannot
have even as much respect for the Jewish
history as for the early Greek so truthfully
left in its natural cloudiness, its wild legend
ary state, without any attempt to give it a
minuteness of detail it could not naturally
and truly possess. The bolder forgery, we
say again, has the less difficulty. The view
of Paine, and of others like him, though it
be called crude and unlearned, though it be
stigmatized as " vulgar infidelity, " is really
easier than some theories that have been en
tertained by the Straussian and Westminster
schools. It is easier to believe in the making
an entire new temple, incredible as that may
seem when we think what a temple it is, than
264 THE DIVINE HUMAN
in the filling up an old tumbling ruin with
such elaborately- wrought cornices and carved
work, to say nothing of Cherubim and Sera
phim, and holy symbolism, so utterly out of
place unless regarded as representative of
ideas that must have constituted the ground
and reason of the whole structure.
And now, if such wholesale forgery, as we
first showed, is really beyond all belief, then
there remains but one conclusion. The first
of our three suppositions is the only solution
of the difficulty. The whole Jewish history is
true, as true in its details, its dates, its
numbers making all allowance for human
injuries in transcription as in its general
outlines. The evidence for the one part
cannot be taken out, without rending away
all foundation for belief in the other. But
take it all away, and there is no possible
means of solving the greatest problem that
history presents, namely, the influence of
this imagined nation, this ideal religion, upon
the whole course of human affairs and human
IN THE SCRIPTURES, 265
thinking. Receive it as a whole, and it has
a strange supernatural light, a world-light,
that we receive along with it. It explains
itself and vastly more in history besides.
Take it in any other way, it not only leaves
us in darkness, but becomes itself the most
inexplicable problem ever presented to the
human mind.
The only writer in all antiquity who makes
any approach to this Bible finish, though still
at a vast distance from it, is Homer ; and this
is the very reason why we are so impressed
with the truthfulness of his descriptions of
life. In his catalogue of the Grecian ships
and armies, (although in the main employ
ing round numbers,) in his accurate geogua-,
phy, in his graphic local touches, in his
family stories, he presents a picture, whose
falsehood it is difficult to conceive. We do
not hesitate to say it we believe in Homer,
and no common effort of sceptical literary
dissertation would make us yield the faith.
We have more trust in many of the scenes
12
266 THE DIVINE HUMAN
of the Odyssey than in the relations of some
modern travellers. His wild and fanciful
supernatural sits loose from his descriptive
narrative. It is not so religiously and mor
ally interwoven as in the Bible histories. It
is, therefore, quite easy to separate it, and
when we do so, the thoughtful reader who
can enter into the Homeric spirit, cannot
help feeling that in other respects, the Iliad
and the Odyssey are among the most truth
ful of books. If it were not so, no amount
of the mere marvellous would ever have
given them such a lasting place in the heart
of the world.
But why not, then, take his supernatural
too, on the grounds of the argument we are
now using in respect to the Bible ? The
answer is easy, and we think conclusive.
There is first, that immense and essential
difference between the two supernaturals on
which we have previously insisted. Every
candid, thoughtful mind, certainly every
truly religious mind, must see and acknowl-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 267
edge it. The Jehovah of the Scriptures, and
the Zeus of Homer ! the angel visits of the
Old Testament, and the Homeric deities sink
ing below the human in the part they take
in the strifes of men ! the divine guardian
ship of a chosen nation, as preparatory to a
chosen church to be gathered from all na
tions, and the petty providence of the god of
Ida which, though extending much beyond
the blind selfish passions of the other powers,
is yet so limited by the Trojan and Grecian
camp ! let go the mere scenery and take
alone the moral conceptions ; bring them
fairly before the mind and we need say no
more. But why is the supernatural of the
Bible so different from that of other ancient
nations, so greatly different, that in the ab
sence of other reasons, and no others can be
found, it can only be explained on the
ground of the supernatural itself? The
whole case might here be rested, but the
question may demand, and we are willing to
give, a wider answer. We say then, to make
268 THE DIVINE HUMAN
the cases wholly parallel, had there been
connected with the Homeric stories through
out, had there preceded and followed them
in Grecian history, a supernatural like that
of the Bible, possessing every where the
same high moral reason and the same relig
ious dignity, we should have been compelled
to receive it on the same ground. But to
fill out the parallelism to its widest extent,
we must make a supposition long in time
and corresponding to the whole collateral
field. We say again then Had there been,
not only in Homer, who gleams upon us like
a light in the desert, but in a series of Hel
lenic writers before and after him, the same
ever consistent mingling of their earthly his
tory with a high superhuman providence,
and an eventful human destiny ever held
forth as the religious ground of the national
life, had there been a Father of the Faith
ful, like Abraham, among the y^/evctg or old
ancestral stock of the Athenians, had the
days of the Sons of Hellen presented some-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 269
thing like the Patriarchal life with its pure
trust in the One most high God, had some
grand pyramidal figure like Moses towered
up amid those chaotic myths of the Dorians
and lonians, had there been a Noah among
the old Pelasgi, or some traditions of an
Enoch who "walked with God " and was
taken away from a sin-deluged world, had
there been in the early Grecian "mythical 7
something like the visits of angels to rest-
seeking, world-weary pilgrims, and divine ap
pearances for righteous retribution instead
of the fanciful, unmeaning apotheoses of a
Bacchus or a Hercules, had "the sons of
Javan and Elisha and Kittim and Dodanim "
brought with them from the East, and ever
preserved among their descendants, such a
holy genealogical record as has been carried
down by their early consanguine! the Sons
of Eber, had this ancient document thus
preserved by them furnished the only key
to a universal ethnology, or assumed to do
so, above all, had there come out of these
270 T HE DIVINE II U M A N
Javanic or Ionic roots (for they are the same
original word) such a nation as the Israelites
with their wonderful monotheism and their
most religious law, carrying down with them
in their earliest records, and as repeated con
tinually in their later writings, such catholic
promises that " in them all the nations of the
earth should be blessed, 77 had there been
ever prominent in Grecian thought, instead of
fate and destiny, the ideas of covenant and
election, had there been all along in place
of Dodonean triflings and petty Delphic
cheats, a grand series of Messianic oracles,
commencing with one older than Prome
theus, and holding forth the ; Desire of all
nations," not merely as an artistic or scientific
civilizer, but as the long-expected spiritual
deliverer of our sin-burdened humanity,
had these Messianic oracles kept growing
clearer and clearer, pointing more and more
to the unearthly and the heavenly, until
there had at last arisen in this favored Hel
las, this land of " the covenant," some one
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 271
so human yet so superhuman as to be justly
claimed as their fulfiller, and in whom might
have been discovered a resemblance, not to
Pythagoras, or Plato, or to Socrates even,
but to Jesus of Nazareth, could we thus
fill up the parallel (and who can take excep
tion to the mode of doing it) then would we
be prepared to answer the question fully, we
think, satisfactorily, conclusively. Had the
supernatural of Homer and the Greek lo-
gographers been of this kind, had it been
grounded on such a "covenant," supported
by such promises so anciently uttered and
for all humanity, had it contained such
world-oracles, and had the great series of
events connected with them terminated in
the advent of such a Messiah, then could we
have believed in a Grecian supernatural, and
regarded the Sons of Javan, or the Hellenic
race, as "Chosen of God," the "Elect of
God," the First Born among the nations, as
the race called out from the common heath
enism, supernaturally ruled of heaven, des-
THE DIVINE HUMAN.
lined to be a light to the barbarians and to
all people who sat in the darkness of idolatry
and sin.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE NATURAL nr THE HISTORY OP CHRIST The Birth of Christ
The Visit of the Magi The Legendary Aspect has come
from the Romish Traditions How Different the Bible would
have been had it been compiled in a Later Age Saint Stories,
The Talmud The Universal Eastern Belief in the Coming
of a Hero Messiah, or El Gibbor The Angels and the Shep
herds No Human Invention these Sublimity of the An
nouncement " Glory to God in the Highest ; on Earth Peace,
Good Will to Men" The Temptation Its Truthfulness,
Subjective and Objective The Crucifixion " Then sitting
down they watched him there." Holiness and Suffering un
surpassed How strange if there had been no Outward Witness
ing of Nature This Human, this Natural, the Whole of it ! In
credible God Beholding yet Indifferent ! Still more Incredi
ble Beholding with Interest, yet that Interest never mani
fested, never to be manifested ! This surpasses all belief A
Divine Interest immeasurable in its Intensity The Incredible
of the Sense as opposed to the Credibility of the Higher Think
ingor the Incredibility of the Reason.
ON the supernatural in the history of Christ
we have already partially dwelt. Take out
all the directly miraculous, and there is
nothing on earth so human. Nowhere, too,
does this show itself more strongly than in
12*
274 THE DIVINE HUMAN
the midst of the most astoundingly marvel
lous that accompanied his birth and cru
cifixion. Where every thing would have
tempted to the wonder-making style, it is
there precisely that we have all that is most
sober in the manner of the narration, most
truthful and probable in the connection with
it of the antecedent and surrounding events
of history. The story of the Magi, and
especially, as some would regard it, the
oriental style of its commencement, might
seem an exception to this. " Now when
Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in
the days of Herod the King, lo, there came
wise men from the east to Jerusalem." It
does appear, at first view, to have a little
of the legendary look ; but when we exam
ine carefully the source of such a feeling, it
is found to have come from the legends that
the Church of Rome has made out of it, and
which we associate, in style if not in fact,
with the original picture. In the same way
has there been given to the passages that
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 275
speak of the Virgin a coloring of thought
different from what they would otherwise
have possessed. There is, however, an im
portant view of Bible truth to be learned
from this. We see from these Romish leg
ends what the New Testament would have
been, or rather what a different aspect would
have been given to its narrations, had its
early materials been left floating until they
had been gathered into a written form by
these traditionists. How very different from
the plain histories of Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John, would have been our Gospels,
had they been first compiled in the Fifth or
Sixth century ! There might not, perhaps,
have been more of the miraculous, but it
would have had another style ; it would
have been the predominant thing, and by its
swelling features have betrayed this false
position. The actual presence of the super
human, or its close proximity, made the spirit
sober ; the deep conviction of the evangelical
writers, so different from the inflating leg-
276 THE DIVINE HUMAN
endary faith, kept down the tendency to the
mere wonder-feeling and wonder-making.
These are aspects of style inseparable from
narrations of the supernatural made long
after the miraculous epoch has passed away.
They betray the fact that the reality to
which they refer is removed to a great dis
tance. They show effort, perhaps uncon
scious effort, to make up for this distance,
and the loss of the near impression, by dis
proportion and exaggeration. Thus we see,
too, what the truthful histories of the Old
Testament would have become under a simi
lar process in the hands of the later Rabbins.
The Talmud and the Romish saint-stories
are proof enough of the kind of shape the
whole Bible would have taken, had not su
perhuman power intervened continually for
the preservation of its human truthfulness.
For the reasons given, this story of the
11 Wise men from the East" has at first some
thing of the legendary aspect, and yet, when
we come to view it in all its connections,
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 277
there is no event that fits more exactly, not
only with the Jewish, but with the consist
ency, and most sober aspect, of the world s
general history. We are assured by a Roman
author well acquainted with the fact about
which he writes, that at this time there pre
vailed, throughout the East, an opinion that
some great one was about to arise who should
possess the dominion of the world, and that
Judea was the country in which his birth was
to be expected " percrebuerat Oriente toto
vetus et constans opinio, esse in fatis, ut eo
tempore Judea profecti rerum potirentur."
This vetus opinio, or ancient belief, was but
the expansion of the great Messianic idea
of the Hebrew Prophets, or of the still older
idea that had coine from the earliest times,
even from the days of that primitive patri
archal revelation of which every Eastern na
tion had preserved some remains. In the
Book of Job we have evidence that it was
not confined to the Jews. The visions of
Balaam show that it was common to the
278 THE DIVINE HUMAN
earliest seers, and had place among " the
Children of the East." Aside from direct
history, aside from the Messianic oracles
whether of the Jews or of other nations,
aside from the Messianic tradition as more
or less appearing in the distortions of all the
Eastern religions, aside from all this, what
more natural and probable than the idea itself,
even if we suppose it to have arisen sponta
neously, without oracle or special revelation,
in the human mind ! What more consistent
with the highest truthfulness of human con
ceptions, than this thought of a Saviour, a
Redeemer, a hero, a mighty one, who should
come in the latter day for the deliverance of
our sin-wearied humanity! This feeling
would reach its crisis when the whole politi
cal power of the world was seen gathering
to one head. No wonder that the more sec
ular and ambitious minds interpreted the old
wide-spread oracle of the Roman emperor.
The more thoughtful souls looked in a differ
ent direction. Many things would turn them
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 279
to the land of Judea. The Israelitish nation
had become, from various reasons, an object of
special attention. They had begun to make
a conspicuous chapter in Roman history.
Their captivity in Babylon and Persia had
left remembrances such as had accompanied
no other nations conquered by those strong
empires. Wherever they were known, and
they were now beginning to be known quite
widely, they were recognized as a " peculiar,"
a very " peculiar people." There was at this
time a Jewish school in Babylon, which was
among the chief controllers of thought in the
East. Isaiah shows a knowledge of the Per
sian ( 9 ) doctrine of Good and Evil, and
nothing is more probable than that the fol
lowers of Zoroaster, or the Magi, or " Wise
Men," as they are called in the gospel, should
have had some knowledge of his glowing
prophecies respecting the wondrous child to
be born of a virgin, and who was to be called
The "El Gibbor," the " Mighty One," the
"Prince of Peace. 7 Under such a thought,
280 THE DIVINE HUMAN
too, the pilgrimage undertaken was an event
in perfect keeping with the thinking and
feeling of those countries and those times.
Turn we now to a different scene, in har
mony with, and yet presenting a most impres
sive contrast to, the one we have already been
contemplating. This world-wide story of a
Messiah to be born was not only the study
of the Eastern sage, but formed the topic of
nightly conversation among the shepherds in
"the hill country of Judea." "And there
were in the same country shepherds abiding
in the field, keeping watch over their flocks
by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord
came upon them, and the glory of the Lord
shone round about them; and thej^were sore
afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear
not ; for behold, I bring } T OU glad tidings of
great joy which shall be to all people. For
unto you is- born this day in the city of David,
a Saviour which is Christ the Lord. And
this shall be to you the sign ; ye shall find
the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying
IX THE SCRIPTURES. 281
in a manger. And suddenly there was with
the angel a multitude of the Heavenly host
praising God and saying Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace, good will ( 10 ) to
wards men. 11 No human faculty of invention
ever invented this ; no human imagination
ever filled it up, or magnified it from some
rudimentary fact or scene. We feel that the
picture is perfect ; to touch is to deface it.
It is unique in itself ; it never had additions
or alterations ; it never grew. The scene is
one total impression. There is no one part
we can select as the germ of the rest. There
were shepherds watching their flocks by
night, and discoursing with each other about
certain strange rumors that then filled the
whole " hill country of Judea." They had
heard the story of Zachariah. They knew the
universal expectation in regard to the Son
of David, and the universal feeling that his
advent was near at hand. Their views of
Him may have been very erroneous, but
their hearts were full of the expected glory.
282 THE DIVINE HUMAN
Is it strange that they saw a light in the
heavens ? Call it fancy if you will, an ex
cited imagination ; we are only arguing here
for the subjective truthfulness of the narra
tion. Is it strange that they heard voices in
the air around them and above them ? Say
if you will that their awed feelings, and their
wondrously elated hopes, shaped these sounds
into the glorious words that are recorded.
Here is the great, the real wonder. It is the
spiritual marvel that throws in the back
ground the physical strangeness. "We believe
in the miracle on the ground of the doctrine
conveyed ; we find it easy to give credence
to an outward supernatural as attested by
the sublimity of such a message. It is nothing
so strange that shepherds should see lights
in the heaven, that they should hear voices
in the air ; but such voices, such words, ar
ranged in such a sentence, that has not yet
ceased, and never will cease, to vibrate
through the heart of humanity "Behold, I
bring you glad tidings of great joy which
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 283
shall be to all people, Glory to God in the
highest ; on earth peace, good will toward
men. 77 We leave out of the account the idea
of sheer forgery as something too incredible
for any sane mind to entertain. A light was
seen sounds were heard, whether by the ear
of the sense, or the ear of the imagination, or
the ear of the most truthful inner spirit. The
scene thus far was a reality, the light was a
reality, the voices a reality ! If wholly sub
jective, it is only the more wonderful reality.
What was there in the common thought of
these shepherds, in their culture, their associ
ations of ideas, that should have so shaped the
vision, and brought out upon the airy undu
lations that sublimest collocation of words the
world had ever heard, that message of divine
peace so far beyond what philosophy had ever
conceived, or poetry had ever dreamed. It
drives us to the outward supernatural as the
easier explanation of the mystery : Why should
there not have been a light from heaven, and
a voice from heaven, when such a truth was
284 THE DIVINE HUMAN
uttered ? If convinced that it is subjectively
true, then, for the mind that truly conceives
the scene and the idea, it is difficult to with
hold assent from the full reality, in the widest
sense of that Protean word. We have ever
been led to regard this narration in Luke as
one of the key passages of the Scriptures, or
one of those infallible proof texts where the
divine beauty and glory so shine out that we
cannot easily conceive of falsehood. Heaven
is here come down to earth it lies all around
us ; how pure the air, how clear the light,
how holy the revelation ! Glory to God in
the highest ; on earth peace, good will to men.
If this is unreal, what then on this poor
earth of ours can be regarded as real ? There
is a power in truthful representation, when
we can conceive it aright, that is irresistible.
We know it as we know the sun that shines,
the heat that warms, the emotion that we
feel, the very thought we are thinking. And
thus there is a conviction that enables us to
say with boldness, if this passage in Luke is
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 285
an unreality, then is our whole life an un
reality ; philosophy, and science, and his
tory, and theology, and all opinions, and all
religions, are but the veriest dreams of a
visionary, unsubstantial existence.
In the same manner, too, may we separate
the subjective from the objective truthfulness
in the history of " the temptation ;" and this
not for the purpose of denying or under
valuing, but of confirming the outward nar
rative. The Child of such a birth, so strange
and said to be so strangely heralded, we
cannot wonder that from his youth he should
have been filled with the idea of a divine
mission, and that even at the tender age of
twelve years he should have felt that "he
must be about his Father s business." Then,
too, does it cease to be strange that he, as
well as those he came to deliver, must have
a struggle with the Great Power of evil.
This admitted, the fasting, the wilderness
life, are all truthful for such a character, all,
too, in strict accordance with the ascetic
286 THE DIVINE HUMAN
ideas of those who were esteemed most
pious, most unearthly in that age. "And
when he was an hungered the devil came
unto him." Say, if you please, that it was
a vision occasioned by his abnormal physical
state. It may have been none the less real,
none the less designed by God as the very
means for its production. But the inward
conflict the soul strife how truthful the
representation of that war in the spirit, how
grand the lesson that he who saves us from
sin and temptation had himself to go through
the process by which he was to know, not a
priori, from known or conceived causes, or a
posteriori, from seen effects, but in se, in
prasenti, from actual personal experience,
what temptation is, and how the soul feels
when assailed by it. Such a High Priest
became us who was tempted in all respects,
xata navTa %a$ biLoibtrfia, as we are
tempted, yet without sin. This is the essen
tial reality ; and when this is conceived as it
ought to be, how easy to believe the less
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 287
reality of a true personal objective presence
as the accompaniment and representative of
so mighty and real a power ! The writer
thinks he cannot be misinterpreted in the
views here given. He does not deny the
objective ; he holds to the objective ; but he
would wish to present strongly the greater
wonder of the natural and human working,
as that which makes not barely credible only,
but easy of belief, the supernatural and su
perhuman accompaniment. Let one believe
in the perfect truthfulness of the Magi visit,
the shepherds 7 annunciation, the spiritual
struggle with the tempting power, and then,
the moving meteor, the celestial glory, the
demon appearance, the angelic voices, be
come, at once, expected and harmonious ac
companiments of the higher reality. If one
does not thus believe in the human, if he
does not know enough of the human, his
own human, or the human in general, to
make such conceptions possible to him, and
to give them the high air of reality, then
288 THE DIVINE HUMAN
would all supernatural manifestations be in
vain. " He would not believe truly, though
one rose from the dead. 7 He would not be
lieve because there is for him nothing in the
credible of the reason, of the conscience, or
the spiritual discernment, to carry him
against the incredibility of the sense.
There is no page in the Bible more in
tensely human than that which records the
crucifixion of Christ, and yet there is no one
that so directly draws the mind to the
thought of the unearthly and the supernat
ural. The malice of the Priests, the cruelty
of the fickle multitude, the wrath of the
national prejudices, the Roman "caring for
none of these things," Caiphas, PilaTe, Pi
late s wife, the soldiers, the frightened disci
ples, the clamoring mob, how human are
they all ! The sufferer, too, in their midst,
keep out of view all higher thoughts, and
where was a more perfect manhood ever ex
hibited to the world ! How different from
the humanity around him, and yet how truly
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 289
man ! Take up the book and read. Does
a shade of scepticism cross the Christian
mind, we know of no better prescription for
such a disease than this : Take up the book
and read the story of the crucifixion. There
is no need of retouching the picture. Noth
ing can add to the divine limning of the
scene as presented in the Evangelists. Thus
far, we venture to say, no sane mind can
have any more doubt of its reality than of
any event of yesterday narrated by the most
authentic of human testimony. Thus far
there is nothing in Thucydides or Tacitus,
nothing in Robertson or Prescott, nothing
in any book of Memoirs, nothing in any Bi
ography, ancient or modern, to be compared
with it. We feel throughout the power of
a graphic truthfulness that is wholly irresist
ible. But there is one point in which it
seems to be all condensed. It is the close
of the drama so far as the mere human
agency is concerned. The soldiers more
active work is done. With stolid indiffer^
13
290 THE DIVINE HUMAN
ence have they nailed him to the cross, then
raised it high in air. " They parted his gar
ments among them ; " and then, says the
author of this inimitable narrative, "then
sitting down they watched him there." It
was with no feeling of compassion. All that
they had now to do was to await with mili
tary patience that lingering agony they so
well knew, and to which they had become so
indifferent. The beginning of the work is
put for the consummation. " They crucified
him," says the Evangelist ; " then sitting
down they watched him there."
Here is the end of the human, the natural.
So far all is credible, probable, irresistibly
truthful. But can the mind rest here ? Will
it not become incredible again if there is
nothing more ? The series of events culmi
nates in this one scene presented to their eyes,
now presented to our imaginations. What
have we before us ? A holy and innocent
being, the most holy the world had ever
known, made to suffer the most lingering
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 291
and agonizing pain. Now turn we from the
credible of sense and nature to the higher
credible, the higher truthfulness demanded
by the moral reason and the conscience.
Here is the spectacle ; and now we ask,
Which is the greater wonder, that this
should be the whole of it, all finished here
on earth, with nothing more in any world
beyond, in any heaven above or hell below,
in any time then present, in any time to
come, that this should continue to be the
whole of it, this natural, this human merely,
or that there should be some manifestation
from a higher sphere in attestation of some
higher ideas than those that filled the minds
of revengeful Jews, or the watching Roman
soldiers ? The bare sight, the bare concep
tion of the outward scene, has of itself a
strangeness, an a priori incredibility which
even the familiarity of sense cannot wholly
take away. A holy soul thus suffering ! But
add another thought. Thus suffering all
alone, no higher soul beholding ! How the
292 THE DIVINE HUMAN
wonder rises! Beholding, yet indifferent!
It passes all belief. Beholding with inter
est, with interest most intense for no move
ment of the Divine soul can be either small
or measurable and yet that interest never,
never manifested, and never to be manifested
in any outward sign. We have reached the
utmost climax of the marvellous. But grant
ing it to be conceivable, still the question
returns : Is this the less wonder, or that the
earth should quake, the rocks should rend,
and darkness cover all the land, when the
Omnipotent Holiness is thus defied, and the
proof is challenged, as it were, that the
higher world is not, and cannot be, indiffer
ent to such a spectacle ? We cannot bear
the thought, when w r e think and feel aright.
No miraculous in nature can surpass it in in
credibility. There is mind somewhere, some
higher mind, some universal soul, to whom
such a scene is matter of intensest interest ;
and just as strongly do we feel that this
interest must display itself. The publicity of
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 293
right, the manifestation of right, is just as
much a demand of the reason as the abso
lute existence of right. It must become
objective, or the essential idea is marred.
At some time, in some way, will it so come
out, that not only will the reason acknowl
edge it to be a truth, but the eye shall see,
the ear shall hear, the inmost sense shall
feel it as the deepest fact, the highest reality,
of the universe. It may not be now, nor
nigh, yet such objective manifestation will
surely be. Even in ordinary cases of wrong
we cannot keep out the thought. Things
will not pass away, the universe will not go
on its eternal course with any wrong, the
least wrong, buried in eternal indifference, or
forever hidden subjectively in the mind of
God, or having its retribution only faintly
signalled in some obscure and hard to be in
terpreted arrangements of unvaried physical
law. No soul is ever really satisfied with
the common babble about the retribution of
nature. The reason, too, has its law, and
294 THE DIVINE HUMAN
this demands the supernatural manifestation.
Before the world ends, before even nature
ends, there must come some higher and
more distinct sign, some unmistakable show
ing that the least moral evil is of more mo
ment than any order, or any disorder, of the
material universe.
Thus are we compelled to think even in
respect to common wrongs. Here ordinary
experience seems to be against what would
otherwise be the decision of the reason ; and
so, "if the vision tarry we wait for it,"
the higher, though for the present overruled,
faculty of the soul gathering from the very
delay accumulated argument for the great
final manifestation. But in such a case as
this of the crucifixion, we feel that the scale
of credibility turns the other wa}\ The
present becomes more easy of belief than
the suspended manifestation. The super
natural surprises our sense ; it is oppos
ed to the associations of the lower though
the more common experience, and this, its
IX THE SCRIPTURES. 295
lower incredibility, is the ground of Hume s
vulgar argument against miracles. On the
other hand, the entire absence of any such
manifestation in such a case as this, gives a
shock to the higher thinking. It is a higher
incredibility that Hume and Bentham were
utterly incapable of estimating. Such ab
sence would be a wonder we might receive
with a submissive faith, humbly trusting to
the revelation of some distant day ; still in
itself, and to a right mind, would it be a
higher marvel, requiring a higher exercise
of this faith than is demanded for crediting
any of the wonders in nature recorded by
the Evangelists.
CHAPTEll XVII.
THE MYSTERIOUS CHASM IN CHURCH HISTORY The Burial of
Christ The Appearance to Mary At the Sea of Galilee
Subjective Truthfulness of the Stories of the Resurrection
Commencement of the Historical Chasm "The Acts of the
Apostles" Its Scanty Eecords How Little \ve know of the
Apostolic Age I The New Life in the World Had come
from the Grave of Christ The Historical Silence like the
Chasms discovered in Nature s Progress The Silent Super
natural coming between the Old and the New Creations
Separates the Inspired from the other Writings of the Church
The Light seen again towards the days of the Apostolical Fathers
A new Power had worked mightily between Whence came
it? The Apostles carried with them something more than
Truth Beside the Doctrine, they had with them the Risen Life
itself of the Crucified The Phrase kv Xptorti Xpiarbe kv
vfuv Early Christians styled Christophori, Christ-bearers
Justyn Martyr The Language means more than Discipleship
Unknown to the World before A new Thought demanded
new Words Favorite Language of Paul " The New Man "
"The Man in Christ" Christ in the Church We study
Christ in Paul Comes nearer to us than in the Evangelists.
"HE was crucified, dead and buried. Here
ends the natural, or as we have styled it,
the ordinarily credible, in the history of
Christ. " When Jesus, therefore, had re
ceived the vinegar he said, It is finished ;
and he bowed his head and gave up the
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 297
ghost." The soldier had pierced his side to
ascertain the fact that he was unmistakably
dead. " He who saw it had borne witness"
in his own loving and mourning memory to
the never to be forgotten event. The rich
friend of Arimathea had begged the body of
Pilate and taken it down from the cross.
The honorable friend Nicodemus, despond
ing but no longer afraid, had brought " his
aromatic mixture of inyrrh and aloes about
an hundred pounds weight." " Then took
they the body of Jesus, and wound it in
linen cloths, with the spices, as the manner of
the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where
he was crucified there was a garden, and in
the garden a new sepulchre wherein was
never man laid. There laid they Jesus,
therefore, because of the Jews preparation-
day ; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand."
Who can doubt this ? What motive to
doubt it? What reason to doubt it that
would not involve in scepticism every nar
ration of a death and burial ever given to
13*
298 THE DIVINE HUMAN
the world? As well doubt that Socrates
drank the poisoned cup, or that Washington
was entombed at Mount Vernou.
Here ends the scene, we say, in its natu
ral or earthly aspect. Most grave is it, most
solemnly impressive, yet within the limits of
the ordinary or sense credibility. Certain
events are recorded as transpiring after
wards, but they belong to the unearthly or
supernatural chapter. It is a part of our
present argument to pass them by, though
without at all losing sight of them. They
are, indeed, supernatural, as viewed in their
absolute verity, but it is sufficient, at pres
ent, to advert to the subjective truthful
ness of the narrative. There is the story of
a reappearance upon earth, of the body
being strangely missing from the sepulchre,
of the wonder of the disciples when this
startling rumor is brought to their despond
ing minds. One saw the empty grave, and
believed that its tenant had risen from the
dead. The others, as is evidently implied,
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 299
went away again to their own homes, still
desponding, still unbelieving, "for they
knew not the Scriptures, 7 they knew not
the glory of that new kingdom, of that new
life for the world, which, as we now know,
beyond all doubting, did truly arise out of
that garden sepulchre. The narrative tells
of one who had a stronger faith, even that
faith whose energy and vitality is love. It
was " the woman, the sinner," who " loved
much because she had been forgiven much. 1
It might have been this faith stripped even
of hope, and reduced to its rudimental ele
ment of holy affection, it might have been
this faith, outwardly desponding, yet in
wardly still alive, that caused her to see and
hear what others saw and heard not. And
so might the sceptical objector maintain that
it was her own loving fancy that through
the dim grey mists of the morning gave
shape to the ever-remembered One who had
once so tenderly pronounced her sins for
given. It was her own loving fancy that
300 THE DIVINE HUMAN
gave this shadowy form the well-known
voice, when it "said unto her, Mary, and
she turned herself and said unto him, Rab-
boni, which is to say, Master." There is a
ghostly, imaginative air about it, the critic
may say, and with some plausibility ; but
who can deny the heavenly strain of the
message that follows this brief and touching
allocution ? She had started to grasp the
body, or the figure, call it what we will,
when Jesus saith unto her, " Touch me not,
Mary, for I am not yet ascended to my
Father ; but go to my brethren, and say
unto them, I ascend unto my Father and
your Father, and to my God and your
God. 7 Fraud here is out of the question ;
no soul that has not utterly lost all feeling
of the pure and truthful can entertain such
a thought for a moment. Fancy may have
raised the form, but could any supposed
fancy have created such a voice and such a
declaration ? Granting, however, that such
a solution might seem probable if we had to
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 301
judge of the story alone, without regard to
its antecedents or its consequents, yet, in
view of these, now so clear and so well
established, how greatly increased the
gravity, how essentially changed the whole
aspect, of the testimony ! We do now know
that there has been, for eighteen hundred
years, coming forth from that grave a power
most unearthly, most superhuman ; a power
that none but the most ignorantly obstinate
can doubt ; a power that has changed, and
is still changing, the face of the world. It is
this fact, this knowledge, which may well be
regarded as rendering, for us at least, such
an objective declaration at the time one of
the most credible events that ever happened
in human history. The incredibility of the
sense and the imagination is lost, yea, over
come an hundred fold, in the higher credi
bility of the reason, in view of the ac
companying truth, and the superhuman
historical effect.
And so of the other appearances the
302 THE DIVINE HUMAN
coming into the midst of the watchful com
pany " when the doors were shut for fear
of the Jews/ the familiar voice so readily
distinguished from its well-known salutation,
" Peace be unto you," the " burning hearts"
that felt a friend was nigh, though " the eye
was holden" from recognizing the changed
form that so mysteriously travelled with
them from Emmaus to Jerusalem ; the sud
den clearing up of all that seemed dim and
phantom-like as they witnessed the familiar
yet solemn act of breaking bread. There is
the same feeling as we read the account of
that early morning visit at the Sea of Galilee,
when again the disciples knew him not until
the beloved one recognized the Master s
speech in the tender question, "Children,
have ye any meat ? " " Then were the dis
ciples glad when they saw the Lord." Is this
the language, this the style of narration, of
wonder-makers or legendary mythopoeists ?
Call it imagination if you will it may be con
fessed that there were some grounds for its
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 303
excitement but how pure the imagination,
how heavenly ! If it were subjective merely,
how holy that subjective ness ! how calmly
restrained by some most unusual, if not un
earthly influence ! What can be more truth
ful than the manner of narration, and what
more incredible than that it should have
been so told by men who knew that it was
all a lying picture, whose most minute and
tender touches would, on such a supposition,
be the grossest of all mendacities ? To think
of such a story, and so told, by men who had
stolen their Master s lifeless body, and knew
that it was lying concealed somewhere, a de
composing corpse ! To think of such truth
ful simplicity, such enthusiasm, such earnest
ness, such courage, such elevated thought,
such holy emotion, such a heavenly life of
love, such martyr deaths coming from such
a source ! of so much unearthly vitality,
in short, proceeding from a mouldering
death, so much spiritual splendor from the
darkness of a hopeless grave ; so much
304 THE DIVINE HUMAN
heavenly truth, or truth that seems so
heavenly, from known lies, so revolting to
any pure conscience, so alien to all elevated
hope, so inconsistent with any moral hero
ism, so utterly destructive of any martyr
spirit, of any soul-sustaining faith ! Incred
ible, most incredible ! Almost any miracle
is more worthy of belief ; while, in contrast
with it, the holy, the consistent, the har
monious supernatural of Christ s real object
ive resurrection becomes the most credible,
or, to use again our seeming paradox, the
most natural of events.
The story of the resurrection is subjectively
the most truthful of narrations. No honest
mind can avoid feeling this. These men are
telling what they firmly believe to be facts.
Such visions were seen, such voices were
heard, whether subjective or objective ; it
would be a wrong to our moral nature to
doubt it ; such an influence was felt as of
one breathing upon them a heavenly power
and spirit; whether as undulations of the
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 305
air without, or proceeding from agitations
moving from the spirit within, such words
did sound in their ears ; they heard them
distinctly saying, "Go ye forth and teach all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost. Whether coming, we say, from the
inner man, or from outward impressions,
these sights, these sounds, these words in
their sublime coherence, their heavenly
thought, were veritable facts in their psycho
logical experience. They lived in their be
lief, they conquered in their power, they died
in their obedience. Is it held to have been
all subjective or imaginative ? Be it so.
We believe that no honest mind can hold to
the inward here and yet long resist the im
pression of the outward truthfulness. But
the first feature is sufficient for the general
argument that has been maintained in this
book, and, on this account, we are willing
to pass by, for the present, those narrations
in the gospels that are subsequent to the
306 THE DIVINE HUMAN
death of Christ. Aside from its extraordi
nary yet most natural antecedents, severed
from its remarkable consequents, judged
simply as a very marvellous event depend
ing merely on such an amount of human
testimony, it would present a different aspect,
and might, perhaps, rationally allow some
degree of honest scepticism. It might be
ascribed to a variety of outward and inward
impressions without making it thus a greater
wonder than would be the admission of its
actual objective truth. But such is far from
being the case before us. It had these
strange antecedents, it had these wondrous,
and, except on one supposition, inexplicable
consequents. To these, therefore, let us
pass, in accordance with the method steadily
pursued of making the natural, the human,
or the anthropopathic in the Scriptures, the
ground-work of the entire and continuous
argument.
"He was crucified, dead and buried."
And here the remarkable history we have
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 307
traced so far might seem to have corne to a
sudden termination, or rather, to present
a most mysterious chasm. Comparatively
might this be said with truth, although there
is a narrow line of continuance contained in
the book called " The Acts of the Apostles,"
and the scanty records it gives us, confined
mainly to a portion of the labors of but one,
and he the last commissioned of the Chris
tian messengers. Has it occurred to the
reader how little is told us anywhere of the
other apostles, and how very small a part
this book must be of the whole history of
the establishment of Christ s kingdom on
earth ? A priori we must believe that the
solemn commission did not remain a dead
letter, but must have been most faithfully
and extensively fulfilled. The remains of
ecclesiastical tradition, above all the labors
unrecorded yet proved by their effects, the
new life everywhere made known, the
churches planted from Malabar to Britain,
from the Goths to the Arabians and Abyssin-
308 THE DIVINE HUMAN
ians, attest the presence of other messen
gers, but of the same message, the same
preaching, the same story of the cross, the
same central doctrine of one who had risen
from the dead, and become a newly risen
life in all who received him into their souls by
faith ; but of all this there are no authentic
contemporary records. Leaving out, then,
for the present, this narrow stream which
we find in the book of the Acts of the
Apostles, we have, in the main, and for the
greater part of the world and of the Church s
history, the wondrous fact to which we would
here call attention.
"He was crucified, dead and buried."
Here, then, with the exception mentioned,
begins one of the strangest chasms in history,
the stumbling chasm to some, and yet, to
a right view, methinks, more truly marvel
lous, and thus more faith-confirming, than
any filling up, had it been all as fully given
as the narrative of Paul in the Acts. But
even this soon leaves us. The continuation
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 309
after Christ left the earth is like a narrow
bridge over a strange depth, and even that
terminates before it spans half the dark
abyss. How little this is, every intelligent
reader feels, and yet it is all we have till we
come down nearly to the days of Justin
Martyr. But what a mighty work had been
accomplished between ! Our first feeling is
that of subdued complaint. Why could not
more have been given us of this deeply in
teresting period? Why could it not have
been filled up, if for no other reason, to
baffle the Anti-Christian critics who would
build in this historical waste their imagina
tive theories, and find room therein for the
dates of their traditionary and apocryphal
gospels ? But there it stands, the unbridged
chasm over which no critical research can
find a way. On one side the death and
burial of Christ ; on the other this new and
wondrous life now working such moral
miracles in the Roman world. A greater
wonder, we repeat it, than any filling up.
310 THE DIVINE HUMAN
The slender narrative alluded to, though ex
tending so little of the way, and so abruptly
terminating, is sufficient to show the un
earthly spirit, and the irresistible energy of
this new power, whilst the silent blank that
remains prepares the thoughtful mind for
the contemplation of that real marvel,
which, though Gibbon could not see it, is,
in fact, the greatest miracle in the chronicles
of our earth. Here was wrought the great
est change in the ordinary flow of human
acts, and human opinions. The dividing
of the Red sea, the turning back of the
waters of Jordan, did not equal it. Never
was there such an apparent effect in the
absence of all assignable earthly causes,
natural, moral, social, political, or philo
sophical ! Such a transition period stands
alone in history. It is like one of those
awful pauses in the physical progress, where,
in the mighty visible effect, science traces
the existence of a new creating power, and
yet that power has worked unseen. It hath
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 311
veiled its operation, until it stands revealed
in the new result, the new order of things it
has initiated in nature. The new light
shows the hidden power. It is more start
ling than though all along this transition in
terval there had been a series of visible
miraculous displays, linking the old with the
new order of things. We come down to
the brink of the last traceable causation,
and we know that the supernatural, though
we see it not, must somewhere have come
between, for here is something which the
old nature, the old causation, never could
have produced. Such is the effect of this
blank, or apparent blank, in the Church s
history. To the thoughtful mind folios of
miracles, and of minute details of apostolical
labors, would not produce a deeper feeling of
the wonder-working power of God.
It is, too, well worth bearing in mind, that
it is this interval which separates the in
spired from the human writings of the
Church. May we not say, with all reverence,
312 THE DIVINE HUMAN
that in this, too, may be discovered marks
of a superhuman wisdom ? Had there been
an uninterrupted continuance of writings,
and ecclesiastical annals, there might have
been some ground for the argument which
would blend them all in one, and place the
patristic on the same or a similar ground of
authority with the apostolical. This sharp
line coming between, or, rather, this im
passable interval, was necessary for that
feeling of reverence which puts the one
class of books at an unapproachable distance
from all others. They are parted in time
and position, as well as by the awful
superiority of thought that characterizes the
immediate messengers of Christ. Hence
that veneration for the apostolical writings
so remarkable in the earliest subsequent
writings of the church. In the days of
Clement, "Holy Scripture is quoted as the
inspired word of God, separate from all
other books, and with as religious a rever
ence as even now after an awe-creating
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 313
lapse of eighteen hundred years. Such is
the voice of the true tradition, setting aside
the claims that are falsely made for it as of
equal, or even collateral, authority with the
Scriptures. It is, indeed, the earliest and
most universal tradition, superseding all
other traditions, that the books of the old
and new Testaments, the latest of which are
the apostolical epistles, stand apart from all
human writings however religious, that
they are, in truth, the books that contain, in
the most unrivalled degree and manner, the
divine faith, or the mind of God as revealed
to man.
" He was crucified, dead and buried."
We left the Saviour sleeping in the tomb of
Joseph. A brief history follows, and then
all is dark. Now look down the intervening
waste. We discover the light again in the
brief writings and still briefer accounts of
the earliest fathers. It is enough to show
that the world has changed ; a new era has
begun. The new force has not yet become
14
314 THE DIVINE HUMAN
very visible in political history, but it is be
yond all doubt alive and working mightily.
It is manifesting itself in signs of portentous
change. The ages have taken a step in pro
gress from which they can never wholly go
back. Unknown as yet to statesmen and
philosophers, the transforming power is intro
ducing elements of thought and feeling that
must soon affect the whole outward face as
well as the deep foundation of Roman society.
Whence came it ? From philosophy ? That
had virtually died generations before ; the
schools had become barren ; it was centuries
since they had borne any children like Pythag
oras, Socrates, or Plato ; the questions dis
cussed by wrangling Stoics and Epicureans
were dead scholasticisms ; Sophists yet talked
of a^e-n), and disputed about the summum
bonum, but no one expected that their lives
should correspond to their ethical precepts.
The whole story is told by Lucian, scoffer
as he was against Christianity as well as the
old mythology. Did this mighty change
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 315
originate in any silent working of any po
litical or social movements? These were
all tending to anarchy or despotism. Phi
lanthropy hardly existed even in theory, and
morality had almost perished from the earth.
But a new morning is certainly breaking on
the world. The ancient vision is drawing
nigh. The New Jerusalem is coming down
from Heaven. The " feet of the Messengers
are seen on the tops of the mountains. 77
Arise, City of our God "Arise, shine,
for thy Light is come, and the glory of the
Lord is dawning upon thee. For lo ! dark
ness covers the earth, and thick darkness the
nations, but the Lord is rising upon thee,
and his glory is seen upon thee. And the
Gentiles are coming to thy light, and kings
to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine
eyes and see ; they are hastening to thee,
thy sons from far, thy daughters are carried
at thy side ; the multitudes of the sea are
turning to thee, the powers of the nations
are becoming thine." Whence, we may ask
316 THE DIVINE HUMAN
again, this new light ? It has shone forth
from the darkness of that garden sepulchre.
Whence this new life ? It has come from the
tomb of that crucified One. Here was, in
deed, a resurrection undeniable. It brings its
own attestation ; it has come down the stream
of ages ; it is now with us, this unearthly
power ; the books that record its early deeds,
the strange doctrines so different from any
thing conceived by human thought, and
which have ever accompanied it these are
still with us, still, as of old, challenging the
intellect of the world to account for them on
any known natural process of mere human
development. In our reason s awe, if not in
our sense-wonder, can we still feel the power
of this standing miracle ; and, thus prepared,
it is not difficult for us to believe in the per
sonal resurrection of that divine man from
whose grave there has certainly flowed forth
such a life-giving, earth-transforming force.
Thus prepared, we feel that this resurrection
of which the Apostles say so much, must be
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 317
something more than a figure, more than a
mere rationalistic revival of truth however
transcendent. Examine it as we find it in
its early transition state, examine it as it
appears when the current of the world s his
tory embraces it never more to be lost. It
was not such an influence as came forth from
the grave of Socrates. It was not a school,
a doctrine merely, a system of philosophy.
Nothing of this kind, no mere truth, or
truths, addressed to the intellect, had ever
before possessed, or would then have possess
ed, the power of thus stirring and trans
forming the souls of men. It was a real life,
and no figure ; it was something more than
even divine truth regarded in its rational and
moral effect ; it was a motion in the world, as
real and vital a motion as ever flowed in the
physical creations, or in the old humanity.
The bearers of this new energy did not regard
themselves as merely messengers of truth
however high and heavenly. This was, in
deed, an important part of their mission, but
318 THE DIVINE HUMAN
not its essence. They carry with them him
who was not only " the Way and the Truth,"
but also "the Life." They bring into the
world a new vital power and the divinely ac
companying grace of dispensing it. It is the
life of a man who died that^it might be thus
imparted. This risen life, risen in the power
of the Spirit, risen in the quickening of the
flesh, this new humanity, they proclaim, they
offer, they actually bring to men. How com
municated, through what media, organic,
sacramental, ineffable these are questions
we leave to others, if others shall ever be
able to settle them. It is the gve&ifact itself
to which attention is called, the great
thought we find everywhere in the writings
and preaching of Paul, and which presents
itself as the "strange feature of Christianity
when the gospel stream unites? with the
moving history of the world. The interest
taken since the Reformation in the doctrine
of Justification by Faith, and the vast im
portance of its revival from the mediaeval
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 319
semi-paganism, have made us lose sight too
much of this stronger and still more essen
tial feature of the early Church theology.
Hence has come such a change of language
as makes it less easy to understand the
Patristic writings. But in the primitive
Church it was a reality affecting every other
aspect of the Christian truth. Christ was in
the Christian, as he was in the Church his
earthly body. It was no figure employed to
represent a mere following, or discipleship.
His life was in their life. Hence his suffer
ings were their sufferings, his resurrection
not only the pledge but the ground of the
new life then working in their souls, and
destined, eventually, to quicken their mortal
bodies ; and so his satisfaction to law was
their satisfaction, his obedience their obedi
ence, his righteousness their righteousness
imputed to them rightly, because it was
really theirs as it was really his. They were
Christophori, Christ-bearers, Theophori. How
prevalent was this feeling, how universally
320 THE DIVINE HUMAN
the idea entered into the mind of the early
Church, may be judged from the fact that
heathen satirists derided these fanatics, as
they were fond of calling them, for the mad
notion that they carried their God with
them, in their souls.
The new idea had introduced a new mode
of speech. Justin Martyr had been edu
cated in the dialectics of Platonism, but how
different the style of language employed by
him, after his conversion, from that of any
school of philosophy? How different the
language of the same Justin Martyr, as a
disciple of Plato and a disciple of Christ!
He was learning the vernacular of the New
Jerusalem, that city of our God below,
" Where Egypt, Tyre, and Greek, and Jew,
Began their speech and lives anew."
It was indeed new and glorious truth to
which he had awaked, but this was far
from expressing the peculiarity of his new
state. It was not merely another system
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 321
of philosophy he had found. He is now
Christophorus, Christ-bearing. The dead
man s life, given for the Church, had become
his life ; he lived henceforth in the risen
vitality of the crucified Redeemer.
E/co iv avroTg "/ in them" says the
Saviour, in His intercessory prayer. There
is the same idea in that frequent language
of the Apostle, iv Xqiarw, "in Christ," and
the corresponding expression Xgiov&g Iv
VfilVj " Christ in you." Are these figures, we
ask again, or do they denote the most vital
of realities? The relation of a teacher to
those who adopted his system of truth, how
ever high, even though it included, as truth
merely, the highest verities of the Christian
faith, such a relation would seem to fall
below the significance of language so strange,
so new, so evidently called out by the exi
gency of a new and strange idea. It may
come very natural to us now to treat it as a
figure, but then, it should be remembered,
it was without precedent in the world. It had
14*
322 THE DIVINE HUMAN
with it no such associations of thought, either
for the cultivated or the common mind. The
language had never before been heard. *&gt;
MWOTJ, in Moses, would have sounded as
strange for such a purpose as iv TTkatwvt,, h
Zfywvi,, in Plato, or in Zeno. Discipleship
had never been thus expressed before Christ
said, " Lo, I am with you always, even to the
end of the world. 7
Such, then, was their warrant for going
forth ; they carried the Saviour with them,
not his teachings, not his truth merely, not
his doctrines alone, though it were the doc
trine of the cross, not any mere power given
to the truth, if we can understand what that
means, but Christ himself. Teacher and
taught were alike iv XQIGTM, and the evidence
that the former was a true Apostle came
from the fact that his ministrations were
followed by this new life in his converts,
whether manifested in the outward miracu
lous gifts, or the more inward sanctifying
grace. " Ye seek a proof tf Christ speaking
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 323
in me," rov Iv tfiol kakovvtoq XQLOTOV, says
the Apostle, 2 Corinth, xiii, 3 : " Prove your
own selves ; know ye not that Jesus Christ
is in you unless ye be addxifjioi, unproved
reprobates ?"
This style of speech is not employed in
the Old Testament. It can be traced to the
influence of no Jewish schools or sects.
Neither among Pharisees, nor Sadducees,
nor Essenes, is there to be found anything
like it. It is as utterly unknown to any
Rabbinical as to any classical usage. What
then is its fair meaning? May it not be
that in modern times we have fallen below
it, have treated it too much as a mere figure,
or, if it be a figure, have suffered our ration
alizing glosses to warp us away from that
most inward and vital significance which
alone could have demanded and made uni
versal so strange a metaphor ? We venture
to say that this is now the great question of
the Church. Until this matter of interpreta
tion is settled, our other polemics are com-
324 THE DIVINE HUMAN
paratively of little importance. Let it be
once thus settled in real, and not merely
rhetorical, accordance with primitive usage,
and many other theological discords might
be resolved that now seem utterly unmanage
able.
It was certainly something more than a
figure to the writer who so extensively em
ploys it. The Pauline language and the
Pauline doctrine seem wholly built upon it.
From it, too, grows out all the Apostle s per
sonal experience. He talks like a man who
would seem to have, in some measure, lost
his old personal identity. There is still the
continuity of memory and consciousness ;
the old Adam is indeed well remembered,
but along with all this there is a new hu
manity, as real and as vital as the first.
After his conversion he is no longer Saul of
Tarsus, but " a man in Christ." " / know a
man in Christ," he says so it should be ren
dered, and not / knewoWa avQQwnov lv
" I know a man in Christ who was
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 325
caught up to the third heaven :" " Of such an
one will I glory, but of myself (my old self)
I will not glory." How few are the verses
we can read continuously in the writings of
this fervid Christian without finding some
thing to remind us of this idea ? Whatever
may be the matter or doctrine treated of
how soon does it come round to that loved
name so constantly identified with his new
personal being, Christ Jesus, or in his own
soft Syriac vernacular, Yesu Meshiho, so oft
in its occurrence beyond what is to be found
in any other parts of the Bible ! Place the
Pauline epistles where we may, they might
be detected, without other proof, by the
very sight of this word striking the eye in
every page, and in almost every verse. If
we are authorized to judge by the force and
frequency and tenderness with which he
employs it, Christ was in Paul as really and
truly as he ever walked by the sea of Gali
lee, or talked with his disciples in the
flesh ; as really and truly as he personally
326 THE DIVINE HUMAN
died on the cross, and rose again from the
dead.
We study Christ in Paul ; may we venture
to say it? The writer would speak with
caution here, and yet the opinion may be
advanced, that we learn more of Christ, of
the mind and heart of Christ, as he is mani
fested in this noble Apostle, than in the rec
ords of the evangelists themselves. He comes
nearer to us, we see him more distinctly, we
converse with him more intimately, he is
more tender, more human, as thus seen in
the " Christ-bearing" disciple, than in his
outward words and acts as recorded in the
gospel narrations. By such language we
do not underrate those precious portions of
the Scripture. Christ is near to us, very
near to us, as he appears in his life on earth ;
he is still nearer to us may we venture to
say it? as he is risen in the Church. As
God the Father conies to us in Christ so may
we not venture reverently to say ? Christ
comes nigh to us in his holy people, in the
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 327
souls of true Christians, and, above all, as
he is so brightly manifested in the words
and acts of him who labored more than all,
and who, whilst rejoicing in the new life,
was ever willing to give his earthly life for
the Lord Jesus.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE APOSTLE PAUL Compared with other Apostles The
Transformation of Peter Paul compared with James and John
Paul the Apostle of Faith James of Works John of Love
Injustice of this Comparison The World regards Paul as
the Dogmatist Same Injustice, to some extent, in the Church
The Pauline Ethics Paul the most practical of Moralists
Abundance of his Ethical Precepts The Heavenly Love as ex
hibited by John As exhibited by Paul. His Picture of Char
ity The exuberant Tenderness of his Language The Pauline
Philanthropy Compared with the Secular Incidents in the
Apostle s Life and Labors Their Truthfulness Paul no Fa
natic His Moderation His Preference of the Moral to the Mi
raculous Thinks more of Charity than of Gifts The Ideal
unexplained by the Corresponding Actual a greater Miracle than
the Actual itself. Strauss to be met on his own ground.
THE labors and writings of the other Apos
tles would furnish like examples of this new
soul-phenomenon. What thoughtful mind,
awake to the wonderful in anthropology, can
fail to be struck with the difference between
the epistles of Peter so glowing with divin-
est thought, and the narrow self-ignorance,
we might almost say, stupidity, of the same
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 329
man when in the immediate company, and
enjoying the personal instructions, of the
Great Teacher on earth ! Peter before and
after the day of Pentecost what a transfor
mation, what- a resurrection had intervened!
Equally true are these thoughts of all the
others ; but we have dwelt upon the writings
and works of Paul chiefly because of a strong
conviction that not only in the world, but in
the Church, there has been more or less of per
sonal injustice in the estimate formed of his
natural and his Christian character. Among
the irreligious Paul is very generally regarded
as representing the harsher features of Chris
tianity. Infidels and rationalists are fond of
placing him in contrast with Christ; they speak
of him as bigoted, intolerant, dogmatic, de
nunciatory, delighting in the stern and gloomy
doctrinal, in distinction from a practical and
loving morality, all this in the face of the
fact, which can be so easily tested, that all
the Pauline Epistles contain not so much
that is condemnatory and severe as some
330 THE DIVINE HUMAN
single discourses of the merciful Saviour.
And so in the Church ; there has been mani
fested with some a disposition to compare
him unfavorably with the Apostle John.
Paul is indeed commended ; his zeal, his
Christian heroism are described in the most
glowing terms ; it is admitted that he was
il the man for the times." But then he is
set forth as the Apostle of faith, of dogmas,
and these, too, of the harsher kind, whilst
James is the representative of practical mo
rality, and John of the milder and more
heavenly principle of love.
But surely there is a great mistake here.
Certain habits of thought have led good men,
and even profound men, into comparisons
that seem wholly unwarranted when we ex
amine, for that purpose, the writings and
histories of the blessed servants of Christ.
It may be thought irreverent to have any
preferences among them ; each has his own
peculiar Christian excellence ; but an impar
tial examination would show that the prac-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 331
tical ethical precepts of Paul not only exceed
those of James, but of all the writers of the
New Testament, Evangelists and Apostles
combined. Sublime as is the Sermon on
the Mount, holy as it is in every line and
letter, yet is there about it an air of author
ity ; it has a preceptual, ethical form; and
these, whilst they render it more majestic,
more commanding, more divine, do also we
would say it with all reverence make it
less human, less tender, than those chapters
of Romans and Ephesians where the spirit
of these heavenly canons so lovingly appears
in the most moving exhortations to the daily
Christian life. There it was Christ the Law
giver, the Prophet, the Master, the Great
Teacher ; here it is Christ the risen Saviour,
Christ in Paul, giving the same precepts to
a beloved Church, recognized as his own
members, his own living body, deriving its
ethical life from Him as its own living Head.
Paul, it is said, is the representative of
faith John, of love. Such a contrast is un-
332 THE DIVINE HUMAN
just to both. Each of them, it may rather
be held, represents that "faith which works
by love," and that love which faith in the
risen life of the Crucified elevates into a
vital affection of .fraternity, far transcending
any abstract benevolence grounded on secu
lar ideas or any merely secular reasoning.
In the beloved apostle, this holy affection
takes more of the quietistic form. It is
paternal rather than fraternal. It is a sweet
and calm emotion, having more of the pure
ly heavenly, and less of that divine-human
which so powerfully affects us, or should
affect us, in the burning words of Paul.
Nowhere else in the Scriptures, unless we
except the declarations of the Saviour s love,
can there be found language of such exquis
ite tenderness. And it is everywhere.
Hardly can there be found a doctrine, a
precept, an exhortation, an interpretation,
from which the writer does not soon turn
to express his love to Christ ; and nearly as
frequent is the exhibition of the same Ian-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 333
guage towards those whom he believes to
be in Christ, his spiritual kinsmen, his very
dear brethren, yea, nearer than brethren in
the natural humanity, even members of the
same spiritual body, partakers of the same
heavenly life as derived from the same risen
and exalted Head. The language of John
is general ; it specifies not those relations in
which the emotion of Christian love has its
peculiarly human intensity. Along with its
delightful simplicity, it has something of
the rapt and mystic air. "Little children,
love one another : he that loveth his brother
abicleth in the light : he that loveth not,
abideth in death. We know that we have
passed from death to life because we love
the brethren : Beloved, let us love one
another, for love is of God, and every one
that loveth is born of God, and knoweth
God : he that loveth not knoweth not God ;
for God is love. 7 Here is the transcending
height of the wrapt contemplative soul.
But Paul describes the same divine affection
334 THE DIVINE HUMAN
by its human motions in the Christian con
sciousness. How heavenly and yet how
near to our human hearts is such language
as this : " Love suffereth long and is kind ;
love envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not
puffed up ; love seeketh not her own,
thinketh no evil ; beareth all things, believ-
eth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things ; love never faileth." Or he sets
forth these throbbings of the new life as the
opposites of the old human selfishness and
malevolence : " Let all bitterness, and wrath,
and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking,
be put away from you with all malice : and
be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted,
forgiving one another, even as God, for
Christ s sake, hath forgiven you. 7 Again,
they are presented to us as the richest
growth of the heavenly grace : For the
fruit of the spirit is love, 7 and with love
come "joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith ; that Christ may dwell in
your hearts by faith ; that ye, being rooted
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 335
in love, and built on the foundation of love,
may be able to comprehend, with all saints,
what is the length, and breadth, and depth,
and height of love, and to know that love
of Christ which passe th knowledge ; that ye
might be filled with all the fulness of God. 7
This the language of the dogmatist, of the
harsh preacher of an antinomian faith!
How unjustly, how ignorantly, do the world,
and many professedly in the Church, judge
of this noble servant of Jesus ! He has
been regarded as the austere apostle, but
how he loved even his persecuting brethren
the Jews ! Hear him, too, how he pours
out his soul in love for Christians, and
especially his spiritual children in Christ :
"For we were gentle in the midst of you,
even as a nurse nourisheth her children ;
thus longing for you, lueigbuevoi, being af
fectionately desirous of you, we were willing
to impart unto you not only the gospel of
God, but our own souls, because ye were
t, very dear unto us ; and ye are
336 THE DIVINE HUMAN
witnesses, and God is witness, how holily,
and righteously, and unblamably we behav
ed ourselves among you that believed. 77
But in all this there is another question
than the personal character of Paul. It has
reference to the origin of these divine ideas,
and these new emotions associated with
them, this new love to man so born of the
still deeper love to a crucified and risen
Redeemer: " Christ in you the hope of
glory : " " For your life is hid with Christ in
God, and when Christ who is your life, shall
appear, then shall ye also appear with him
in glory :" f di OVK m fy& 9 f jj di i v i^ l
Xqia&lt;uo$? li l live, yet no longer I, it is
Christ that liveth in me. 7 Where did Paul
get this divine thought, so far transcending
Plato, of a new and heavenly life lived here
on earth, tV ty ^rfj aaqxi, "in this our
mortal flesh ?"f In what school of philos
ophy did he learn this psychological mys-
* Galat. ii., 20. f 2 Corinth, iv., 11.
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 337
tery of a new humanity, connecting itself
vitally with the old manhood, and elevating
it to its own celestial sphere, so that Chris
tians here might have their u citizenship"
with the Ecclesia above, and thus " be made
to sit together in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus ?" Call them figures if you will, still
the wonder remains ; whence these un
earthly figures, and these unearthly doctrines
demanding a language so unknown to all
the world before? There is but one answer
to these questions, and on that answer is
grounded the immovable evidence of Chris
tianity and the Scriptures.
It is worthy of remark, how, in the hands
of Paul, even the secular, or merely ethical,
benevolence rises to a higher spiritual de
gree. As modified by the new life, and the
new idea, it is no longer the barren earthly
philanthropy. Utilitarian it may still be call
ed, but it is the transcendental or heavenly
utilities it now brings with it, and which so
distinguish it from any classical or heathen
15
338 THE DIVINE HUMAN
virtue, as well as from any modern casuistry
that may claim the name. It is the celes
tial "E^wg, the immortal Love, the love-pro
ducing love, the virtue-bearing virtue, the
Grace the mother of other graces. The dead
antinomian faith says, " Be ye warmed, be ye
clothed, but giveth not ; the secular philan
thropy gives warmth to the body, clothing
to the earthly nakedness; it strives to
make men comfortable, and in confining it
self to this, may ofttimes breed that very
worldliness in which itself as well as all higher
charity expires. But the Pauline benevo
lence, the Christian benevolence, warms the
soul. The secular becomes the subordinate
value, and, in this way, paradoxical as it
may seem, is actually increased by being
made subordinate, whilst the heavenly utility
appears in the new virtue, the new grace it
generates, or tends to generate, in both the
giver and the recipient. How sublimely
does the Scripture charity here rise above that
of any classical or heathen morals ! Surely
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 339
must a soul be blind not to see that there
had now come into the world a new light,
a new love, a new and heavenly principle of
action. Its great value is not so much its
worldly good as its spiritual reproductiveness.
It produces love in other souls, and, thus
regarded as a state of the spirit, is a higher
thing and of higher worth than happiness,
though necessarily connected with it. Charity
enriches the giver with grace, and makes the
recipient a better man. It cherishes devo
tion, it strengthens faith, brings out a rich
harvest of thanksgiving to Grod, and thus
contributes to that great end of moral action,
the divine glory. Beautifully is all this set
forth by Paul (2 Corinthians ix, 12); it is
in fact the idea which renders clear a passage
that has seemed to some commentators to
present no little obscurity : "For the admin
istration of this service (this almsgiving) not
only supplieth the wants of the saints, but
superabounds (neQiovtvovoa) through many
thanksgivings to God ; whilst, by their ex-
340 THE DIVINE HUMAN
perience of this ministration, they glorify
God for your subjection to the Gospel of
Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto
them and to all men ; and by their prayer
for you as they long after you (imno&ovvtwv
Vfiaq), loving you dearly, on account of the
exceeding grace of God in you : thanks be
unto God for his unspeakable gift." How
different the motives for this almsgiving,
how different, too, the benefits enumerated,
from those of the ordinary, secular or utili
tarian benevolence ! The thought of hap
piness, or of any worldly, comfort, almost
wholly disappears. It is lost in the glory
of the higher ideas that come welling up
from this " s^r-abounding ?; fountain, the
thanksgiving, the glorifying, the prayer, the
tender love. We see, too, the train of
thought that led Paul at the close to break
out in the rapturous exclamation " Thanks
be unto God for his unspeakable gift," the
gift of Christ, God s merciful alms to a poor
perishing world. From this gift of Christ
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 341
comes the life that warms them all, the gen
erative power that makes this one virtue of
almsgiving the mother of so many others.
The gift of Christ, it rescues us from perdi
tion, it saves us from pain, it is a source of
the purest happiness ; but more than all
and this was the ineffable value that rose
highest in the Apostle s mind it creates the
richest virtue in the human soul, and thus
abounds, and " superabounds, to the glory
of God."
No part of the Scriptures would furnish
better examples of that outward naturalness
and truthfulness on which we have so much
insisted than the " Acts of the Apostles, 7 and
especially those parts that give us, with so
much lifelikeness of coloring and detail, the
labors of Paul. If space allowed to dwell
upon them, we might refer to almost every
point in his career. How real is every pic
ture ! Paul at the feet of Gamaliel, Paul
the zealous Pharisee, Paul at the stoning
of Stephen, Paul on his way to Damascus,
342 THE DIVINE HUMAN
Paul seeing visions and a light from heaven ;
whether subjectively or objectively, we in
quire not now, but when was a vision ever
more truthfully narrated ? Or turn we to
his new life : Paul kneeling before Ananias,
Paul praying, receiving baptism, speaking
" straightway with boldness in the name of
the Lord Jesus, "--Paul with the brethren at
Jerusalem, again seeing Christ in the temple
vision, journeying on his new mission to
Antioch, sent forth to the cities of Asia
Minor, reading in the Synagogue on the
Sabbath day, now worshipped as a messen
ger from heaven, then stoned and left for
dead by the wayside, Paul withstanding
Peter to his face, contending with Barnabas,
distrusting Mark, departing with Silas,
Paul in perils by land, in perils by water,
in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in
fastings, troubled on every side, yet not
distressed, always bearing about in the body
the dying of the Lord Jesus/ 7 Paul by the
sea-shore at Troas, musing on the shaping
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 343
destiny that seemed, in spite of all his pur
poses, to direct his mighty mission to the
opposite-lying coast of Europe, Paul seeing
by night the man of Macedonia standing by
him and saying, " cross over and help us,"-
Paul at Athens disputing with the philoso
phers, at Ephesus in the midst of the raging
mob, at Miletus kneeling on the beach and
praying with the elders of the Church, Paul
at Jerusalem rescued by the Roman captain,
speaking to the people in his own Hebrew
tongue, pleading his cause before Felix, in
all these circumstances displaying that manly
truthfulness which ever won for him the
favor of the stern Roman authorities, Paul
in the deep, a prisoner in chains, yet rising
through the greatness of his spiritual strength
to the actual command of the foundering
vessel ; plain outward facts all of them ;
how objectively graphic in their narration,
and yet how suggestive, how full of soul !
An uninspired writer, especially a modern
one, would have inverted the pictures, turned
344
THE DIVINE HUMAN
them inside out, as it were. He would, per
haps, have filled his pages with Paul s " sub
jective, " as it is called. He would have given
his religious experience. He would have
told us all how he/dfc, and what he thought,
as he stood on Mars Hill, or what great con
ceptions filled his soul as he drew near the
mighty city of the Seven Mountains. And
yet what lets us more readily and clearly
into the inward character and state of the
man, than the simple objective style of the
Scripture narrative ? We have before our
eyes, and distinctly conceived in our thought,
this most remarkable person in every stage
and phase of his old and renewed being :
Paul the youthful Pharisee, "haling men to
prison," arid stoning them to death, yet verily
thinking that he was doing God service,
"Paul the aged," looking to his departure,
confessing himself the chief of sinners, yet
maintaining the earnestness and sincerity
with which he had run the Christian race,
and fought the fight of faith, Paul, of whom
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 345
even after his conversion, it might be
thought that no one would be more likely
to prove a fanatic, or a rash enthusiast, yet,
instead of this, ever the man of loving mod
eration, who was willing, in the noblest
sense, to be all things to all men if so be that
he could win souls to Christ, Paul the ar
dent, the excitable, the vision-seeing, and
who, it might be thought, would have de
lighted in the miraculous, the wonder-mak
ing, yet, on the contrary, ever preferring the
moral and spiritual, however sober, to the
marvellous, however tempting to the relig
ious imagination : so truthful was he, so
loving, so just in the midst of excitements
that might have affected the strongest un
supported reason. He could speak with
tongues more than they all ; he magnified
the miraculous gifts with which God had
endowed the Church, even where he turns
from them and says, " yet show I unto you
a more excellent way." Then follows that
picture of Charity before alluded to, that
15*
346 THE DIVINE HUMAN
heavenly limning, by which alone, if men
had eyes to see, and hearts to feel, might be
tested the inspiration of the human soul that
conceived it, and the divinity of the Scrip
tures in which it is contained.
We do not underrate physical miracles,
when we say they are less wonderful than
such a character. What influence on earth,
what school on earth, Oriental, Occidental,
Greek, Roman, Jewish, could have " devel
oped " the Apostle Paul as he appears in this
his own strange transition age ? We might
rest the evidence of Christianity, as it has
been most ably and convincingly rested, on
the utter impossibility of explaining this mys
tery in the human in any other way than by
the supernatural and divine.
The Straussian men should be met on their
own ground. Given the ideal to account for
it, this is the problem. We have the ideal
Christ, the ideal Paul, the ideal Christian
Church with its superhuman doctrines. They
are before us in history, they are now with us
IN THE SCBIPTUKES. 347
I
in books, they are seen and felt in the world.
There is no known earthly development to
which they can be assigned. Why then
should we hesitate to admit the divine and
the unearthly as manifested in some corres
ponding actual? The former without the
latter is only the greater wonder. It has
the doubly miraculous, its own exceeding
strangeness, and the utter inexplicability of
its human origin.
CHAPTER XIX.
APPLICATION OF THE ARGUMENT THE BIBLE A WORLD-BOOK
Summation of the Argument from the Natural Such an Exhi
bition of the Human could not have been without the Super
human The Jewish as compared with the Greek and Roman
History The Bible Catholicism in its Adaptation to individual
States of individual Souls Moses nearer to us, notwithstand
ing his Orientalism, than the Greek and Roman Legislators
The Bible Hebrew as compared with the Greek and Latin
The Remarkable Intelligibility of the Bible Hebrew in the Let
ter Surpassing, in this respect, the other Shemitic tongues,
though aided in its Interpretation by them Two Reasons of
this The Breath of the Lord inspiring it A Second Reason,
the intense Humanity of its Images.
THE Scriptures furnish an inexhaustible
mine of illustration for the purposes of our
argument ; but the rapid sketches that have
been given are sufficient to satisfy any
thoughtful mind, that in the book itself, in
its "peculiar people" so remarkably con
nected with the whole destiny of the race,
in its history so strange yet so truthful, in
its doctrines so unearthly yet given through
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 349
language so intensely human, in its wonder
ful position in the very heart of human cul
ture, in its sudden power when newly
brought to bear upon the mind and con
science of an age, and in the lasting tenacity
of its influence upon the world s best and
highest thinking, there is, indeed, a mystery
which can be solved by no explanation short
of the supernatural and the divine. Thus,
then, we say in conclusion, take the whole
Bible, leave out its supernatural that is, its
supernatural in outward act fix the mind
upon its earthly history, its unique consist
ency, its ancient ftovlr] or Oracular Messianic
purpose so early proclaimed and so steadily
maintained throughout, let the thought
dwell upon its inherent truthfulness, its
strong human probabilities, in a word, its
great naturalness, and we have before us that
position which for philosophic wonder, if we
may use the term, the wonder of the thought
or reason, surpasses any se?zse-confoundmg
marvel of the outward supernatural itself.
350 THE DIVINE HUMAN
For the supernatural is credible ; there are
times conceivable when the absence of it
would be more strange than its presence ;
but such a history, though so natural and
credible in its parts, is yet, without the
supernatural as its explanation, incredible as
a whole, or would be incredible if there were
not the strongest evidence of its outward
actuality ; and this we undeniably have, for
here are the books, and the people of whom
we speak, and the Church that has been built
upon them, and the present history, and the
many centuries of past history that have been
shaped and made what they are mainly by
the power that is in these books, or by other
powers which find their explanation nowhere
else than in these revelations of humanity to
itself.
Such a people as the Israelites, so strange in
their secluded history, yet so purely human
and natural in their national life, so cut off
from the world s general polity, yet with a des
tiny, so connected with the highest historical
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 351
development of the race, a destiny announced
in the earliest prophecy, and which the whole
course of time has been fulfilling, (11) such a
separate people, in this sense, and to this
end called "holy,"* did exist; all history
has been affected by them ; they exist now
as a distinct people, though such a fact,
strange as it may be, is really the inferior
wonder ; they yet exist, still more vividly
and emphatically, in the mighty power of
the past ; we have their books, their litera
ture, their poetry, their ethics, their theology,
their most stirring national life ; it lies in
the bosom of all that is best known of the
world s culture it would almost seem from
the very course of events, ancient and
modern, and even aside from the " sure word
of prophecy, 77 as though the whole human
race had been created for the very purpose
of bringing out the great truths of which
this people were made the early, and for a
* Exodus xxii, 31, "And ye shall be holy men unto
352 THE DIVINE HUMAN
long time the only, witnesses. Now we may
say that, excepting the outward super
natural, if we choose to except it, the gene
ral worldly certainty attending the annals of
this strange nation is equal to any that be
longs to Greek or Roman history ; in in
trinsic truthfulness, it may be maintained,
it far exceeds them. This, then, being ad
mitted, as beyond any reasonable doubt of
any reasonable mind, what is there rationally
incredible in the thought that such a people
ever carrying with them such a world-destiny,
should be the objects of an extraordinary
divine care, if there is any divine care, or if
such an idea is credible at all in reference to
any earthly object ? Why so opposed to any
strangeness in nature, if we are compelled to
admit the higher strangeness in the histori
cal ? In other words, if we can come thus far,
if there has been such historical superintend
ence, general or special, then again, what
is there incredible in the statement that the
curtain of the natural has been sometimes
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 353
drawn aside, and God revealed " holding the
winds, that they blow not," or "sending
them forth as his messengers," or coming
"in the flaming fire," or speaking in the
11 still small voice," when some event, known
to him as connected with the world s des
tiny, demanded the one or the other mani
festation ?
In the views that have been presented,
we see at least the reason of the wondrous
Catholicism of the Scriptures. We see how
it is that they so adapt themselves to the
common knowledge, and common thinking,
and common imagination, of all men. This
is felt the more the book is studied and
understood. The effect indeed may be
heightened by the elucidating labors of the
scholiast and the archaeologist ; all such
clearing of the letter does, for the spiritual
mind, add to the spiritual power ; but with
out such helps, or with the scantiest supply
of them, and in the poorest translation ever
made, it has a fountain of living thought
354 THE DIVINE HUMAN
never failing in its rich suggestiveness for
the devout unlearned, and never exhausted
by any amount of research on the part of
the profoundest scholar.
There is another aspect still of this re
markable universality. JSTot only is the
Bible adapted to all ages, to all peoples, to
all individuals ; it also addresses itself to the
most special circumstances of each single
soul. Men may doubt this who have never
made the Scriptures their study, who, per
haps, seldom read them at all ; but still there
is no fact better attested in all the range of
Baconian or inductive science. The most
learned as well as the most simple, have
borne witness to it. It is a truth established
that there is this peculiar life in the world, a
life manifesting itself in immense variety of
effect, yet equally powerful for mental con
ditions the most extreme in rank and knowl
edge. It is all true, the picture that Burns
has drawn of the holy influence of the Bible by
the cotter s humble hearth ; it is all true, what
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 355
we often hear, and our eyes have witnessed, of
its transforming power over the illiterate, of
the elevation of thought and feeling it gives
to intellects otherwise obtuse, and, not un-
frequently, to the rudest savage soul. No
other book does this ; but the Bible, wher
ever it goes, is ever followed by some ex
amples of this strange effect ; let the induc
tive philosopher put it in his crucible, or his
crucial analysis, and explain the phenome
non as he best can. Surely it is as interest
ing, and demands as much attention, as some
of the wonders of chemistry or geology. But
much more than this is true. Men pro
foundly learned in the Scriptures, and in all
that wide field of knowledge that relates to
them, have not been prevented by their
critical and philological investigations from
feeling the same quickening spiritual energy
of the Word. Bible scholars like Usher,
classical scholars like Erasmus, philosophers
like Bacon, divines like Edwards, metaphy
sicians like Leibnitz and Hamilton, men of
356 THE DIVINE HUMAN
loftiest scientific as well as spiritual insight
like Pascal, men of highest human culture
like Wilberforce and Guizot, have sought
knowledge, not merely historical, or liter
ary, or speculative, but soul-saving knowl
edge, from this fountain so full and run
ning over for all. As the child sits down
to learn his lesson from the lips of a beloved
teacher, so have they betaken themselves to
the study of the Scriptures, with the deep
conviction that in their human was to be
found the superhuman and the divine. They
have not merely prized them as ancient
writings of rare antiquarian interest, or as
connected with some of the most interesting
questions of history and ethnology, or as
suggestive, oftentimes, of what is deepest in
philosophy, richest in poetry, most rare and
beautiful in literary criticism ; all of these
and more than these have they found in this
treasure of things new and old, but none of
them, nor all of them conbined, have formed
its chief attraction. With reverence have
they bowed their heads upon the sacred vol-
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 357
ume, acknowledging it to be Holy Scripture
in no conventional sense, but as having
truly come to us in our humanity from a
superhuman holy source. With all lowly
submission, as to a divine voice speaking
through human organs, have they listened for
what God would say unto their individual
souls, as adapted to their own individual
experience. No want of knowledge in the
infidel, no self-ignorance in the pretentious
rationalist, can make false the fair induction
to be drawn from this so varied inward tes
timony. Their superficial acquaintance with
the Scriptures cannot nullify this experi
ence of the most cultivated as well as the
most unnurtured minds, or make void the
fact, so far surpassing in wonder any mere
physical phenomenon, that there has been
for many ages, and still is, in our world, this
mighty and most catholic spiritual power.
The peculiarity of the Scriptures on which
we have been dwelling is certainly a remark
able one, let the sceptic explain it as he
may. Whether taken in its religious or its
358 THE DIVINE HUMAN
literary aspect, it is certainly true that in
this character of universality no other book
can be compared with the Bible. Homer,
perhaps, comes nearest to it in this feature,
but at what an immense distance ! Will
any one refer to the Greek and Roman
founders for whom, too, there has been
claimed a sort of inspiration ? Let us look
at it. Historically, ethnologically, political
ly, they are nearer to us, much nearer to us,
than the Oriental Lawgiver ; but spiritually,
humanly, in all that concerns our truest,
our most central manhood, how much more
akin to us is Moses than Lycurgus or N"uma ?
How much better we understand not his
writings merely, but his humanity as one
with our humanity. How much more does
he enter, not only into the religion, but into
the literature, the legislation, in a word, the
whole thinking of our modern society, than
any influence that has descended from Greek
or Roman books. This, it might be said,
has come from a peculiar course of events ;
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 359
but that would be making history a matter
of chance. It is not a mere misplacing ac
cident that has caused it ; this course of
events has been itself one effect of this
peculiar power ; and yet, had the question
been asked, two centuries before the Chris
tian era, what literature, two thousand years
hence, would have the most influence in the
world, what mind among the many acute
minds of that period would have turned to
the secluded hills of Judea ? In like man
ner are their languages, etymologically, syn
tactically, more nearly related to our own ;
and yet, in regard to this interior or more
catholic manhood, how foreign, how bar
barous, may we say, their copious Greek and
Latin, as compared with the power of his
own scanty yet clear and lofty Hebrew !
How much more obscure, too, oftentimes, as
well as feeble are they, notwithstanding their
greater culture, and their more abundant
means of rhetorical expression.
There is a thought here well worth our
360 THE DIVINE HUMAN
attention, in its bearing on what we have
called the Divine human in the Scriptures.
It is the remarkable intelligibility of the
Bible Hebrew. The reference, in this appar
ent paradox, is not to the ineffable doctrine.
Here, indeed, is difficulty ; here is a demand
for study surpassing that required for any
science, any philosophy, of earth. We mean
the intelligibility of the letter all the way
down to where it is lost in the spiritual, the
pure humanness of the media through which
the Divine ideas are approximated to us,
the verbal lucidity, clearness of style, clean
ness of figure, transparency, we might call
it, of radical and etymological imagery.
With the exception of a very few Phoenician
fragments, the Old Testament is the only
writing extant in the ancient Hebrew ; and
yet, even without the cognate tongues that
have only of late been extensively called
in aid, how very little is there that could
be truly pronounced unintelligible, in that
sense of intelligibility that has been men-
IN THK SCRIPTURES. 361
tioned ! But let us imagine, on the other
hand, that Homer, even the graphic, picture-
making Homer, had been our only surviv
ing relic of the Greek, or the exact, word-
weighing Lucretius our only remains of the
Latin, what immense lacunae, or series of
equally worthless conjectures, must have
existed in the best translations ; how much
would be beyond the recovering power of
all the scholiasts, and that, too, not merely
in matters of local and partial allusion, but
in the expression of the most ordinary and
general thought.
It is not, however, merely in the Hebrew
as a language that we find the grounds of
this comparison. There is, in truth, in this
ancient tongue, a sharp outline significance,
a remarkable defining power, as we may
call it ; yet, still mere human compositions,
had they been written in it and been pre
served to us, would doubtless have present
ed, in many respects, the same feebleness
and common-place obscurities- obscure be-
16
362 THE DIVINE HUMAN
cause they are common-place that meet
us in other literature. The daughter dia
lect of the Rabbinical, though vastly more
copious, has become trifling, and, of con
sequence, unmeaning, in the Talmud ;
shelves are filled with the obscure drivel
that has been written in the near cognate
Syriac ; even the nobler Arabic has lost
greatly in respect to its ancient clearness,
and abounds in ambiguities and obscure con
ceits, whose mastery will not pay one often
for the pains taken in their elucidation.
Everywhere else has this grand Shemitic
stock degenerated. Not in the language,
therefore, as such (we mean in the language
radically as distinguished from other tongues
near or remote) must we seek the sole ex
planation of this original power, as we find
it in the Bible. There is one thought alone
that solves the mystery, that gives the full
reason of that remarkable intelligibility
which has been noticed by the profoundest
scholars. It is the Divine breath in these old
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 363
Scriptures that has filled them so full of life ;
it is the Divine voice of authority, sounding
in every page, that has given them this
wonderful and otherwise inexplicable clear
ness. It is because it is " the Word of God,
sharper than any two-edged sword, reach
ing even to the dividing of soul and sense,
the joints and the marrow, a critic both of
the thinkings and the ideas of the heart."
" It is the lamp of the Lord, which like the
breath of man" (in the physical organ
ization), " searches all the inward cham
bers of" the soul.*
Add to this what has been so much
insisted on, the intense humanity of the
Old Scriptures, and we have another reason
why this very ancient and most peculiarly
Oriental tongue so vividly pours out its
thought, and is so translatable, into the
most remotely varying languages of the
modern Western world.
* Prov. xx, 27.
CHAPTER XX.
THE POWER OF THE BIBLE The Effect of the Scriptures not
merely from our Familiarity with them The Power of the
Written "Word as shown at the Reformation Similar to the
effect on the Roman "World, and in the Patristic Period The
" Finding of the Book of the Law " as when found by Hilkiah
the Priest So the Bible went forth from the Cell of the Augus
tine Monk The Power is in the Book itself The Hebrew
Prophets How they talk to our Age The Imprecatory
Psalms Still needed in the Church s Liturgy The Book of
the Race The Old Family Bible Contains our Natural and
Spiritual Genealogy Contains the Ideas of the race that are
most Universal Such as the Fall, Redemption, Incarnation,
the Human Brotherhood Men who compare the Scriptures
with other Books called " Sacred" Difficulties in the Bible
The Fight of Faith Two Kinds of Scepticism Accommoda
tions The Question again asked: Are the Modern Rational
ists making Progress in Holiness? Worthlessness of their
Criticism.
IT might be said that this effect of the
Hebrew writings was owing to the long
familiarity of reverent religious associations.
But such an account of the matter will not
stand the test either of reason or of facts.
It is putting the effect for the cause. It
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 365
fails to explain the first power and the long
tenacity. The Scriptures have had the same
influence, and manifested it much more
strikingly, when first presented to an age or
people, and that, too, not its first recipients,
but a new age or people far removed and
far different, both in history and culture.
We have already alluded to their power in
the Patristic period, when they burst upon
the new-born mind of the Church, and
newly encountered the utterly alien feeling
of the Roman world. Thus was it also in
the Reformation age, after the whole Bible
had for a second time been so long buried
from the common mind. As when Hilkiah
the priest discovered in the temple a copy of
the law that the Lord had given unto Moses,
so came forth the Scriptures from the cell of
the Augustine monk. Men everywhere,
great men and mean men, learned men and
ignorant men. "wept and humbled them
selves at the reading of the words of the book
that was found. ?; What a sudden activity
366 THE DIVINE HUMAN
did it give, not only to the religious, but to
all the higher departments of thinking.
How it quickened the age ! How it made
the theological and the spiritual predominant
everywhere, in the political, social, and even
military life ! How paradoxically, we may
say, yet how truly, did this strangely human
book, with its abounding anthropopathisms,
engage the general mind in the highest
heights of abstract speculation, as though
this very anthropopathism, more than any
philosophical language, contained those hid
den germs that must grow up evermore into
the infinity of thought.
The power, we say, is in the book itself,
and not merely in its historical associations,
or the reverence of early belief, or its long
familiar sacredness. To feel it fully, it is
even necessary, sometimes, to get rid of this
familiarity, by reading the Scriptures from
some new standpoint. We must study the
books of Moses in connection with the near
est contemporary writings, thus transplanting
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 367
ourselves into the old life of each ; arid then
it will be seen that there is in the Jewish
Legislator a world-life that cannot, by any
alchemy of association, or revivification, be
again recovered from any institutes of like
antiquity.
We need not dwell on this universality as
found in the Psalms of David. Devout
feeling and the most learned critical research
alike concur in the thought that the key to
their best interpretation is found in that view
which regards them as the divine songs of all
truly religious souls, the standing temple
service of all ages, so adapted to the expres
sion of temporal and spiritual sorrows, tem
poral and spiritual joys, temporal and spirit
ual triumphs, temporal and spiritual salva
tion, that each may be regarded as the pri
mary or secondary significance, according to
the state of soul in which the recipient reads
or chants the wondrously adapted words.
There is nowhere in the physical world any
such evidence of adaptedness or design as
368 THE DIVINE HUMAN
this. The historical world certainly furnishes
nothing like it. Let it be called accommo
dation, if any prefer the word ; we could not
thus accommodate one of the lyric hymns of
Greece, or a song of the Rig Veda. In these,
it is true, there are strains of conflict, of de
liverance, of triumph, there is, moreover,
the representation of the superhuman and
the supernatural, but then there is wholly
lacking that idea which overlooks all differ
ences of outward human condition, or of hu
man wants, in the nearness of the divine per
sonal presence, the idea of help from the
one God, all mighty, all holy, dwelling in the
highest heavens, yet ever nigh the soul that
calleth on him.
It is this idea, made alive by faith, that
characterizes the Bible prayer, and the Bible
salvation, whether it be of the temporal or
spiritual kind. To the Greek, religion was
a matter of taste, of beauty, of artistic fancy ;
to the Hindoo, it was a mystic contemplation
for the higher, a grotesque monstrosity, or a
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 369
horrid diversion, for the vulgar mind, To
the Christian, as to the Jew, it is a want of
the soul, a want of God, an urgent need of
divine help. There may be, in its Jewish
exhibition, more reference to the temporal,
as we style it, or the immediate life, as in the
Christian, a higher looking to the spiritual
deliverance, yet in each is it the same God,
the same faith, arid thus, as far as its author
and object are concerned, essentially the
same salvation. Abraham trusted God in
temporal promises, and " it was counted to
him for righteousness ;" for it was a whole
trust, a trust for all he knew of his relations
to the Invisible, for all he hoped in respect
to his total being, whether this present
earthly life with a blank beyond, or some
unknown as yet unrevealed existence where
the weary, rest-seeking pilgrim though dead
might yet, in some way, " live unto God."
It was a whole trust, and, therefore, though
having its conceptual limit on earth, it was
really a trust for eternity. " These all died
16*
370 THE DIVINE HUMAN
in faith, not having received the promises,
but seeing them afar, and confessing that
they were strangers and travellers upon the
earth." Religion was not their aesthetic
fancy, their philosophy, their mythic wonder,
or even their mystic quietism, but their souls
urgent want ; they desired God, as a present
help in time of trouble ; " they endured as
seeing Him who is invisible.
The same idea of the Scripture adapted-
ness is suggested by the Hebrew prophets.
How plain they talk to us, how easily we
understand their essential message, when
taken out of its partial aspects of time and
place ! We know well the chronological
periods of their predictions ; we are not at
all ignorant of their primary applications,
nor of the peculiar, the very peculiar, histori
cal states that furnish the ground of their
impassioned admonitions ; most special in
deed, most exclusive are they in their na
tional and ethical aspects ; and yet we can
not help feeling that these ancient Seers are
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 371
talking to us, talking to all men, to all ages.
Their words are just the words, just the
figures, which are needed now, and found to
be most appropriate now, in rebuking every
form of wrong, of oppression, of public or
private wickedness. If any part of the
Bible belongs to a past age, it would seem
to be the imprecatory prayers of the Psalms.
At least, it might be said a later revelation
has abrogated their use. And yet there are
times now, and men now, and transactions
now taking place upon the earth, and wrongs
and enormities still heard of, in reference to
which these prayers would seem to be still
wanted as the most appropriate language.
All other speech fails to express the right
eous indignation so different from the per
sonal revenge. It demands its own appro
priate language, and the ethical want finds
its true relief in these portions of the Church s
immutable liturgy : "Oh! crush the oppres
sor, Lord ; arise, my God, lift up thine
hand, forget not the humble: 7 " Break
372 THE DIVINE HUMAN
thou the arm of the wicked and evil man ;
for thou hast smitten our enemies upon the
cheek, thou hast broken the teeth of the
ungodly :" " Let them fall by their own coun
sels, cast them out in the multitude of their
transgressions, for they have rebelled against
thee:" "But let those that put their trust
in thee rejoice ; let them say, continually,
The Lord be magnified, even all such as love
thy salvation. 77
Is it necessary to fortify our positions by
referring to the discourses of Christ ? When
shall this voice become obsolete, or cease to
be recognized as the voice of a world-mes
senger ? "No man ever spake like this
man," ever spake thus to all men, or is so
understood by all men. Who thinks of
orientalisms, or is critically troubled about
orientalisms, when deeply intent on words
so human and yet so superhuman, so adapt
ed to the East, yet so intelligible in the
West, so marked by the style of the age in
which they are uttered, and yet so in unison
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 373
with the speech and thinking of all ages !
Well may the Scriptures be called THE
BOOK." It is the Book of the race. It is
the old family Bible, long entrusted to the
keeping of the first born, but where all may
come and find their natal record. Here is
the historical genealogy of all nations. Com
pare, in this respect, the simple, truthful
modest ethnology of Genesis with other ori
ental writings, and with those monstrous leg
ends of theirs that are so out of all propor
tion with themselves, and all other history.
Here, too, is the spiritual genealogy of hu
man souls, the generation and the re
generation, the man of the earth and the
11 man from heaven," the humanity, or the
life in Adam, the Christianity, or the life in
Christ. Here is " the image of the earthly,"
and here is "the image of the Heavenly*"
Here, moreover, is that which belongs to all
men as men, the ideas that above all others
are the property of the race. Here is the
fall, the redemption, the brotherhood in
374 THE DIVINE HUMAN
ruin as the ground of all true human sym
pathy, the brotherhood in grace as the
ground of all true human hope, the acknowl
edgment of the supernatural in both as the
true foundation of all genuine philanthropy.
And yet there are men, men, too, claim
ing to be intelligent and philosophical, who
will deliberately put these wondrous writings
on a par with Chinese and Hindoo oracles.
They have never studied them, to be sure,
they know as little of the Scriptures as
they do of the Vedas and Shasters of which
they talk so flippantly, and yet they not
only name them together as belonging to
one general class of "Sacred Books, 7 but
seem even to take a strange delight in giv
ing the Bible a secondary place as compared
with these " venerable authorities." They
do this, too, in the face of the clearest proof,
if they will but study it, that what is most
"venerable" and most remarkable in these
compositions is but the obscured image of
one ancient revelation, a deeply-fouled copy
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 375
from that one antique original now in our
possession.
What must we think of the heads or
hearts of men, who can deal thus with things
most sacred ? What respect can be enter
tained either for their morality or their in
telligence? There are doubtless great and
real difficulties in the Scriptures, as, to a
thinking man, there must be great and real
difficulties everywhere else, both in the
world without and in the world within. Ever
more, as such a one thinks on, existence
seems more and more strange, until he
finds that he must think himself into total
darkness, unless there be, in some form, an
objective truth, an objective oracle, in the
world. The thought, the God-given thought,
we believe, that there must be such an
oracle, where the Infinite communes with
the finite in the finite language, this holds
him up. This leads him to the Scriptures,
and yet, even when he feels, in the deepest
convictions of his experience, that there is
376 THE DIVINE HUMAX
truly a divine voice speaking to him therein,
still are there difficulties, great and real diffi
culties. He must " fight the fight of faith."
These ancient books are strange, even as
nature is strange, and the world within him.
even his own soul, is strange, exceedingly
strange ; and this he discovers the more and
more he knows of its psychological, and
especially its moral depths. These ancient
books are very different from what he would
at first have fancied a revelation ought to be ;
and so, if he keeps on thinking, will he find,
out mysteries, not merely curious scientific
facts or laws, but awful, fathomless myste
ries in nature, such as he never would have
thought could be contained in her, or have
been revealed by her. There is this differ
ence, however, that the farther he goes in
the physical, rejecting every other aid, the
more he gets involved in darkness as to the
meaning of it all ; whereas, to the Bible
student, there does at last arise a light
" with healing in its wings," which he feels
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 377
to be true light by its self-evidencing power,
and by its shedding light on other things.
By the aid of this he sees, more and more,
that in the construction and plan of this
book, there is indeed a superhuman wisdom,
-that in its most human utterances there
is u a thought which is above our thoughts,
and a way that is above our ways." Still
are there difficulties in the Scriptures. For
the trial of our faith, or because in no other
way could the heavenly light be reflected
upon our souls, God has suffered shadows to
rest upon the mirror. To some spiritual
states these may be so magnified in their
shapes, and so intensified in their shading,
as to render faith a difficult exercise of soul,
or only to be sustained by a constant gazing
upon those brilliant heights of truth that
everywhere stand out of the surrounding
mist. The unbelief that arises in such cir
cumstances is not infidelity. It is an un
happy condition of the spirit demanding, in
stead of intolerance, our earnest prayers,
378 THE DIVINE HITMAN
and our deepest sympathy. There are such
sceptics entitled to our respect and our love.
They do not choose unbelief per se ; they
have enough of the light to make them love
it, and long for more of it, notwithstanding
the disquiet that is suffered to visit their
souls.
But no such plea can be made for those
who are evidently fond of these odious par
allels, not more profane religiously than they
are revolting to all pure and elevated thought.
It is hard to be friends with men who can,
without compunction, put Jesus and Confu
cius together, to say nothing of Jesus and
Shakspeare ; it is hard to feel respect for
minds that can see no difference between
the Christian Scriptures and the Hindoo
books ; it is not easy to entertain a senti
ment of tolerance for hearts that will place
the representations of ineffable holiness, and
righteous moral government, and fearful, yet
loving personality, such as we find every
where in the one, on the same level with the
pantheistic common-places, the vulgar gnosis,
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 379
the foul nature-worship, and impure sym
bolism of the other. Is this done knowingly ?
What must be thought of their appreciation
of the pure and the sublime ? Is it clone as
is most probable, in utter personal ignorance
of these books, and of the grossness of their
spiritually disguised sensualism? What must
be thought of the anti-christian hatred that
could " alone have prompted a parallel as
false as it is revolting, as absurd as it is
unholy !
There is, however, another attitude, we
make bold to say it, that is more irrational,
if not more irreverent, than that of either
scoffing or scowling unbelief. It is that of
the men who profess to regard the Scriptures
as in some sense inspired, in some sense a
revelation, and yet with an express or tacit
reserve that most of these " sacred writings,"
Sacra Scripturce, as they conventionally style
them, are already obsolete, and the remain
der fast becoming obsolete in the advancing
light of the world. There are others who
profess a more cordial reception, perhaps,
380 THE DIVINE HUMAN
yet would they maintain that this respect is
due to the thoughts, the " great truths" as
they deferentially say, whilst the style, the
words, the images, are accommodations"
merely, and, therefore, to be dispensed with
by that higher thinking, that can think of
God as well, if not better, without them.
Accommodations truly ! Grant the unmean
ing and evasive word ; but still accommoda
tions for us as well as for past ages ; accom
modations for us as well as for the Platonists,
the Aristotelians, and the Academics of the
first century. Accommodations for us ! And
why not then shall we be accommodated by
them ? Why assume the irreverent attitude
of ignoring their benefit as though we had
obtained some lofty position, or as it has
been shown before, that this claim of prog
ress must mean, if it mean anything to the
purpose some superlatively holy height,
some earth-removing, heaven-nearing height,
that enables us to look down upon these
humble stepping-stones for the feet of the
lower and more worldly-minded traveller.
IN THE SCRIPTURKS. 381
They were well enough in their day ; they
are well enough for others ; but we see
through them ; we have become so spiritually-
minded, so unworldly, that we see without
them ; they are hindrances now rather than
helps to the advanced philosophic intuition ;
the great problems of life and destiny are
all solved ; we have the modern literature,
the modern science, the modern public
opinion ; through their unearthly spirit
uality we are brought in near communion
with the Divine ideas, and have no longer
need of the anthropopathic mirror. Is this
claim of superior holiness all false ? is it
so absurdly false, that the very statement,
when distinctly made, must move wonder
in those for whom it is offered ? then is
the age not yet released from the study of
the Scriptures, the very words and figures
of the Scriptures. Then, instead of looking
over these "accommodations," or looking
under them, or pretending to see through
them, must it be still our wisdom to sit down
to the volume of revelation, and bring our
THE DIVINE HUMAN
heads and hearts in closest communion with
this Divine language, until its hidden life-
giving power shall flow over into our dead,
dark, earthly souls.
Hence the plain position so essential to
all earnest Biblical study, and which we
have kept in view throughout this book.
It is, that the very language of Scripture is
specially, and most efficiently, designed for
our moral and spiritual instruction. If it is
fafavevavoq, truly heaven-breathed, " then is
it all profitable for teaching, for conviction,
for correction, for education in righteous
ness." Thy word, Lord, is very pure,
therefore thy servant loveth it. 7 " Open
thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous
things out of thy law. 77 "The entrance of
thy word giveth light, it giveth understand
ing. 77 " The words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit and they are life. 77 The soul
that feels this, and acknowledges this, has
the ground of a true exegesis. Even the
Geologists are very fond of calling the Bible
Sacras Scripturse. One, the most commonly
IN THE SCRIPTURES. 383
read of these commentators, is interpreting
a Messianic psalm just as he would a Greek
heroic song. In reproof of any contrary
mode he very learnedly says Quod antem in
aliorum Scriptorum interpretatione omnes
repudiarent, idem cur in sacri codids ex-
plicatione admittatur, nullae idonea cogitari
potest ratio " No reason can be conceived
why a mode which all reject in the interpre
tation of other writings should be admitted
in the explanation of the sacred text." But
what does he mean by his words sacri
codids? If it be indeed sacra Scriptura,
sacred or Holy Scripture, then the very fact of
its being such must make an immense differ
ence between it and any Greek or Ptoman
codex. To believe in his heart that it truly
is Sacred Scripture, and that, therefore, every
word of it is pure, every word of it holy
(so far as we can hold it to be the genuine
text or word of God), is the first great
requisite of an interpreter. Without this
idea, though the writing may be valuable
and interesting in other respects, yet the
THE DIVINE HU MAX
laborious comment, which even the rational
ists bestow upon it becomes a mockery and
an absurdity. It is true, one cannot be a
good interpreter, or the best interpreter,
without linguistic and archaeological knowl
edge. On the other hand, however, and
with still greater boldness, may it be said of
all Biblical interpretation that has not the
unction of a hearty faith, that though it may
be a blind aid to something higher than
itself, yet in itself, and for itself, it is as
worthless as " the sounding brass or the
tinkling symbal." It is as dry, as light, as
" the chaff of the summer threshing-floor. ?;
The wind shall drive it away. The onward
march of the human mind shall consign it to
oblivion. It shall have no lasting place, as
a part either of secular or of sacred litera
ture. The infidel and the believer shall
alike scorn it. Neither in the world nor in
the Church shall it ever have that post of
honor which belongs to what is called genius
in the one, or is prized as productive of
holiness or spirituality in the other.
NOTES
NOTE 1. PAGE 65.
EXODUS, 33 : 20. "And he said, Thou canst not
see my face, for no man can behold me and live.
And the Lord said, There is a place by me, and thou
shaft stand upon the rock, and it shall come to pass,
when my glory passeth by, that Twill put thee in the
cleft of the rock, and I will cover thee with my hand
and thou shalt see my back parts, ( iina ris) but my
face cannot be seen" The divine ahorim y what are
they but the aspect or side of deity that is turned to
us, the rear shading of that ineffable mirror by which
the divine glory is reflected to human eyes. They
are the finities of the infinite, as the Hebrew word
would seem to denote, the side that is turned to hu
man thought, and yet as real as that other which can
never be seen by the finite eye or conceived by the
finite understanding. The divine powers as seen in
nature are also called rnsp (Job. 26 : 14), or " ends
380 NOTES.
of his ways," but it would seem to be his moral at
tributes that are here intended, although there was
doubtless in the vision an outward glory. God pass
es by us in the scriptures as he passed by Moses " in
the cleft of the rock," but it is his " goodness," his
justice, his mercy, he proclaims, rather than that
physical working which the pious naturalist might
regard as the truer interpretation of the passage.
That which is infinite can have no finite : so says
our piecemeal logic. But there is a higher power of
the soul that comprehends, if it cannot analyze ; that
has an idea, if it cannot form a conception, or if this
is thought to be too boastful language believes,
where it cannot understand. The infinite contains
the finite, must manifest the finite both in nature and
revelation, must be able to think the finite, as a real
divine thought, or it cannot be itself infinite, omni
scient, almighty.
This two-fold aspect in the divine character appears
in the very oldest scripture. The Spirit and the
Word in creation, "the voice of Jehovah Elohim
walking in Eden in the cool of the day ; " how tran
scendent the ideas suggested by the one style of lan
guage, how human the conception presented in the
other. The serious reader must have noted in other
parts of the Pentateuch this remarkable union of the
highest spirituality and the simplest anthropopathism,
NOTES. 387
sometimes in almost immediate connection. The El
Olam, the Eternal, the Almighty, the Most High, the
same with the manifesting angel that wrestled with
Jacob and talked so familiarly at the tent door with
the pleading Patriarch, the self-existent Jehovah,
the 6 wv, the " I am that I am," who immediately
calls himself, in the next verse, a patrial God, "the
God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob." In all
such representations no contradiction is felt, none is
expressed. God is the unrepresentable One (Deut.
4 : 15, 16), he has "no similitude;" and yet without any
misgiving or sense of inconsistency there are ascribed
to him acts and appearances, which, without the con
ception or imaging faculty, can have for us neither
force nor meaning. In all this the writers must have
seen the contrast, and yet these Old Scriptures go on
their majestic way, neither calling attention to the
divine height of the thought, nor ever apologizing for
the human lowliness of the language and imagery.
NOTE 2. PAGE 92.
ITS CRITICAL EDGE. The reference is to Hebrews,
4:12, where the Greek word KpiriKog denotes the
separating or analyzing power of the Logos, or the
divine word living and energizing in the Scriptures.
With this the whole imagery of that striking passage
is in perfect harmony. " It is sharper than the two-
388 NOTES.
edged sword," duKvovfievog, going clear through,
penetrating to the very cor, core, or marrow of hu
manity. It divides soul and spirit, ^vxn an( l TTvev/na.
These words are not tautological repetitions employed
for rhetorical intensity merely, neither are they de
signed to express a philosophical subtlety, but denote
two departments of the inner man, most distinct,
practically, in their workings, and most obvious, con
sciously, to those who make self-knowledge their
deepest study. In one of these, namely, in the tyvyji,
or sensitive nature, dwell what are, for the most part,
the motives or moving powers of human action ;
whilst from the other, the Trvevfia, or intellectual
chamber, are brought the reasons by which we seek
to disguise these moving powers, even from ourselves.
We cannot bear our own sensual selfishness, and so
this continual attempt, for most men this life-long
attempt, to cover low motives with high reasons, is
ever breeding a still greater darkness in the spirit.
And so it goes on, until there conies the separating
word making light, as of old it did upon the physical
chaos; for that creation, too, was, in the main, a
dividing, a critical separation of elements that before
dwelt together in dark confusion. Another process
of this critical word is to distinguish between the
evQvpfjaeis and the evvoiai rrjs KapAias, " the thoughts
and intents of the heart." This should be rendered
NOTES. 389
rather the thinkings and the thoughts the first re
ferring to the actual present exercises or cogitations
of the soul, which we suffer to become visible to our
selves ; the other to the evvoiai, the more interior
principles, good or bad, the ruling ideas, or settled
thoughts, that make the real man, though lying, it
may be, long and far below the slumbering con
sciousness. The distinction, then, would be the same
in both cases ; and thus interpreting we see the force
of the anatomical language that follows: "For all
things lie naked and dissected (rerpaxrj^iopeva) be
fore the eyes of him (or of that power), Trpof ov r^Llv
6 /loyoc, to whom our discourse relates."
NOTE 3. PACE 94.
" That I may apprehend that for which (or ~by
which} I am apprehended of Christ Jesus "Phil.
3 : 12. The idea has given the commentators trouble,
but the figure itself seems clear. It is an intense ex
pression of that favorite thought of Paul, presented
in the previous verae, of his intimate connection with
Christ. If we take the metaphor in its more interior
aspect, it is " having the mind of Christ" (Phil. 2:5);
a knowing as he is known, an apprehending as he is
apprehended. The more outward figure is in har
mony with the TTJS dvu K^aeug of the following verse,
" the upward calling," or " calling upward." There
390 NOTES.
is the same strong word dtoko) in both clauses. " I
press onward " toward him who is calling me upward,
like the voice (Rev. 11 : 12) saying, dvd(3rjre wde,
" Come up hither." It is a pressing upward to grasp
him by whom he is grasped to get a firm hold of a
hand reached down from above ; that hand which
"lays hold of the seed of Abraham," emXa^^dverai
Ifeb. 2 : 16. Some would refer it to Paul s conversion,
or sudden apprehension by Christ, but this could be,
in any case, only a part of the idea. If we choose
thus to accommodate the language, it is admirably
expressive of the Divine condescension or coming
down to us, both in the incarnate and in the written
word.
NOTE 4. PAGE 106.
Heb. 9 : 1 "Kyiov KoofiiKov, " the world-sanctu
ary^ or world-temple" The contrasts intended by
the writer of Hebrews are so clear, that it is a wonder
how commentators could have had any difficulty about
the meaning of KOOMKOV here, or how our translators
could have so obscured the sense by rendering it
" worldly." The dyiov KoapiKov here is in contrast with
the fiei^ovog not reXeiorepag OKrivrjg ov XELPOTTOLTJTOV
(verse 11), "the greater and more perfect tabernacle
not made with hands," " where Christ, the High
Priest, entered with his own blood, when he had
NOTES. 391
found the eternal redemption." Compare with it,
also, the dyia STrovpdvia (verse 24), the "heavenly
holies," or heaven itself, of which the cosmical holy
was the type,
NOTE 5. PAGE 139.
The passage is near the close of the VI Book of
the Republic, 498 c. Socrates had been setting forth,
at great length, the character of the " true philoso
pher." Any one intimately acquainted with the Pla
tonic writings knows how much the sense in which
this word is employed transcends the use of it in any
other writings, whether ancient or modern. No
where else does the term philosophy come so near
religion. The true philosopher, in the Platonic writ
ings, is the man who, " unknown to the world " (see
the Phffidon, 64 A), or AeA^w^ rovg a/Uoi^, lives for
the spiritual and the divine, in distinction from the
sensual and the worldly. He is one to whom there is,
in some sense, a divine afflatus, KK TLVO^ Ozids eTrnrvoiag
d^f]div7)g fakoaotiiag d^Qivog tpo^, "a true love of
true philosophy from some divine inbreathing."
There could be no perfect commonwealth, it had been
argued, until such philosophers had become its princes
or magistrates. Was there anywhere such a State ?
Had there ever been a State so grounded on heav
enly ideas, and a true Divine legislation? To
392 NOTES.
these questions the answer is given : " If such a peo
ple so governed had ever existed in the immense past
time, or if it now exists in some remote barbarian or
foreign land, then are we prepared to maintain that
our ideal State has been realized, or that it will be
realized, whenever this Muse, avrrj TJ Movaa, this phil
osophic inspiration, or heavenly philosophy, shall have
become its ruling power. For the things of which
we speak, though difficult, are not impossible." Plato
was not a prophet, but who that reads this can avoid
thinking of that divine or theocratic " polity " then
actually existing in the barbarian land of Judea, and
that then future polity of the Christian Church, of
which it was ever the type ? This was the Civitas
Dei, and that true philosophy of which Plato dreamed,
but could never see the accomplishment, even of his
own very imperfect ideal.
NOTE 6. PAGE 144.
We cannot easily believe Mohammed to have been
a sheer impostor. The book he has given us has the
style of high enthusiasm, far above that mere imita
tion aspect which characterizes most of the apocryphal
Scriptures. He seems to have felt that he had a mis
sion to restore the old patriarchal belief in the Divine
Unity. He is, for the most part, in wonderful har
mony with the Old Testament, and speaks not only
NOTES. 393
with respect but tenderness of Jesus, conceding to
him a position more divine than his own, and evident
ly regarding him as having had a divine and super
natural birth. Mohammed laid no claim to personal
miracles, unless we regard as such his remarkable
vision, and the maintenance of the inspiration of the
Koran.
The great interest of this wonderful book, whose
poetic form and nature are so little imderstood, con
sists in its independent narration of some of the lead
ing events in the early Old Testament history. We
cannot here state the argument, but there is abundant
internal evidence that the stories of Abraham, of
Noah, of Joseph, of Ishmael, together with other an
cient events not mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures,
such as the accounts of the prophets Hud and Saleh,
were not derived from the Bible, but came down
from independent collateral tradition among these
sons of the desert .; and that these traditions date
away back to the times of Ishmael, and even to Jok-
tan, who was the son of Eber the great ancestor both
of the Jews and the Arabian?.
NOTE 7. PAGE 155.
" Held sacred from a long antiquity r ." See Jose-
phus, Antiq., Book II., Chap. 12. When speaking
of Sinai, he says : " Now this is the highest of all the
394: NOTES.
mountains thereabouts, and the best for pasturage,
the herbage there being good ; but it had not been
before fed upon, because of the opinion men had that
God dwelt there, the shepherds not daring to ascend
up to it." We learn, too, from other sources, that
this whole region of desert country, from the northern
extremity all the way down the east side of the Ara
bian Gulf or the Red Sea, had a religious veneration
attached to it. It had sacred places, and a religio loci,
and consecrated shrines, from a great antiquity. See
Diodorus Siculus iii., 42. From this source probably
came that early veneration of the Kaaba, or shrine of
Mecca, of which Mohammed makes so much account.
Such veneration may have had its origin in the weird
aspect of these singular regions, but this idea does not
detract from the inspiration of the narrative in Exo
dus. God may have chosen to meet his servant there
on that very account. Or the story of the ancient
supernatural may have been a subsequent tradition,
growing out of that feeling which naturally connects
a religio loci with any great event, religious or histor
ical. Such is the tradition to which Virgil refers in
regard to the site of early Rome, when Evander leads
JEneas to the site of the Tarpeian rock and the seat
of the Capitol that afterwards, for so long a time, had
a religious veneration in Roman history, and which,
even yet, maintains its power over the souls of men.
KOTES. 395
Hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit
Aurea nunc, olim sylvestribus horrida dumis.
Jam tutu religio pavidos terrebat agrestes
Dira loci ; jam turn sylvam saxumque tremebant.
Hoc nemus, hunc, inquit, frondoso vertice, collem,
Quis Deus incertum est, habitat Deus. Arcades ipsum
Credunt se vidisse Jovem ; cum saspe nigrantem
concuteret dextra, nimbosque cieret.
VIIL, 347.
NOTE 8. -PAGE 257.
It may seem strange that the perfect adaptedness
of this 88th Psalm to the condition of the leper king,
Uzziah, should have escaped the notice of commenta
tors ; and yet we cannot help being impressed by it.
" And Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of
his death, and he dwelt in a free house (or separate
house), being a leper; for he was cut off from the
house of the Lord ; and Jothaui, his son, was over the
king s house, judging the people of the land." 2
Chron., 26 : 12.
One of the most striking coincidences, philological-
ly, between this passage and the Psalm referred to,
is found in the Hebrew word iB sn, which, although
of rather rare occurrence elsewhere, occurs in both
these places, and with a remarkable similarity of idea.
The primary sense of the word is free. As the deriva
tive is used in 2 Chronicles, 26 : 21, it denotes a free
house, in the sense of a person left to himself, immu*
396 NOTES.
ra s, away from ordinary employments, separate,
alone. There is a similar use of the Latin liber, as in
the phrase liberce cedes, a dwelling occupied by no one
else. Most impressively corresponding to this is the
use of the word, Ps. 88 : 6 : "Free among the dead;"
or, as the Syriac version renders it, " A freed man in
the house of the dead."
Now, remembering that Uzziah had been a religious
king, notwithstanding this act of impiety, let us com
pare with the history the language of the Psalm.
Can we find anything that so exactly fits it, whether
we regard its exact description, its strong suggestive-
ness of similar ideas, or its most touching pathos ? ;
Lord God of my salvation,
Day and night my cry is before thee.
Let my prayer come unto thee ;
Incline thine ear to my wailing.
For my soul is full of sorrow ;
My life draws nigh to Sheol.
Free among the dead,
Like the slain, like the sleepers in the grave,
Whom thou rememberest no more,
Who are cut off from thy hand.
That is, from thy worship ; they come no more into
the house of the Lord, as we are told in Chronicles
" For he was cut oif from the house of the Lord."
Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit,
In the darkness, in the shadowy depths.
Thou hast put far from me my familiar friends,
Thou hast made me a loathing to them.
NOTES. 397
The language following we cannot help regarding
as that of soliloquy rather than despair. It seems the
rising of a faint hope, presenting itself in the form of
wondering query, like Job s exclamation : " If a man
die shall he really live again ? " So here there would
seem such a ray of consolation feebly entering this
dark house of death. It is the rising thought of some
possible higher life, yet barely strong enough to call
out the musing soliloquizing style. As though he
had asked himself, in wonder at the very conception,
" Ah ! can it be ? "
Wilt tbou work a miracle for the dead ?
Shall the Rephaim (the manes) rise up and praise thee ?
Shall, indeed, thy mercy be told in the grave ?
Thy faithfulness in Abaddon ?
Shall thy wonder be really known in the darkness,
Thy righteousness in the Land of Oblivion ?
And then a more assuring strain. The soul seems
to rise out of its darkness :
And yet, Lord, my cry is unto thee ;
In the morning shall my prayer still come before thee ;
For why, Jehovah, wouldst thou cast off my soul ?
Why hide thy face from me ?
Is the morning here the morning of a new life ?
There are some passages in the Psalms that would
seem to warrant such an interpretation. In the clos
ing lines, however, there returns again the gloom of
the prison-house :
398 NOTES.
Wretched am I and spent with trembling ;
I bear thy terrors, I am wild with sorrow.
Thy wrath passes over me, thy alarms consume me ;
They come round me like floods all the day.
Far from me hast thou put lover and friend,
My nearest ones are away from my darkness.
There is but one thing that would seem in the least
inconsistent with such a view. It is the expression,
v. 15, "from my youth up," as it is rendered in our
common version. But the root there found, when
used for youth, is almost every where else in the
plural, like the corresponding Hebrew term for age.
The two or three cases where it seems to have that
sense in the singular, do all admit of a better, though
a kindred version. Its root sense (agitation) is the
one here employed; as Psalms 109 : 23.
On farther examination, we find that a similar view
of the Psalm is taken by Ikenius, and combated by
Venema. See Venema on the Psalms, vol. 5, p. 69.
NOTE 9. PAGE 279.
The reference is to Isaiah 45 : 7. "I am the Lord;
and there is no other. I form the light and create
darkness; I make peace and create evil." Formans
lucem et creans tenebras, faciens pacem et creans
malum. The best commentators have regarded it as
directed against the Persian or ancient Oriental doc
trine of the two principles, good and evil, or light and
NOTES.
darkness, as taught in the Zendavesta. It was em
ployed also by the Fathers against the heretic Mar-
cion, who held the same opinion.
NOTE 10. PAGE 281.
The Vulgate gives us a very singular rendering of
this passage " Gloria in altissimis Deo&gt; et in terra
pax hominibus bonce voluntatis f " Glory to God in
the highest, and on earth peace to men of good-will."
In this it is followed by the Rheims and Wickliffe
translations that were made from it. It requires the
Greek reading evdoitiag which has little or no author
ity. Every critical reader must see how it mars the
glorious passage. Indeed, it is one of the most serious
faults of this, in the main, admirable version of the
Scriptures.
NOTE 11. PAGE 351.
In Isaiah 24 : 5, the Jews are charged with having
broken the "Everlasting Covenant? tbw n-i^fi. But
w r hat is meant by this ? Aben Esra regards it as the
universal unwritten law of nature and conscience. To
the same effect is it interpreted by Hieronymus. But
Gesenius maintains and justly, we think that such
an idea is alien to the Jewish mind, accustomed as it
was from the beginning to precise mandates and
national stipulations. The high sense, however,
which the prophet evidently intended, is found (and
400 NOTES.
that, too, in strictest harmony with the national ideas)
in this " Old Covenant," which made the Jews a
world-people, as we have called then, and gave them a
world-destiny. See Deut. 32 : 8. It was the promise
to Abraham (and that, too, a clearer republication of
the promise in Eden), that " in his seed all the nations
of the earth should be blessed ; " in other words, that
in the line of his seed should come the Seed of the
woman, the anciently-promised Redeemer or Deliverer
of mankind. This was the Berith Olam, Siadrjur]
aluvios, foedus sempiternum, the Covenant of Eter
nity, the world-covenant, the covenant that, transcend
ing their local history in Palestine, was to go through
the ages, or olams, carrying out the great idea on
which the Jews, obscurely as they may have under
stood it, ever prided themselves. " Israel was," in
some way, to be " God s salvation, even to the ends of
the earth." Even in the more restricted sense it was
a "covenant of ages." The national Israel survived
the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and Macedonian
empires. But its highest fulfilment is in that " true
Israel," or Civitas Dei, to which all other nations
and all other history have been, and ever will be, sub
servient.
OVERDUE.
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